In this unforgettable and âessential feminist memoir of womenâs livesâ (Sarah Wildman, author of Paper Love) the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection unearths her motherâs hidden past in in Nazi-occupied Austria.
To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. Eve rarely spoke about her childhood and it was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except Manhattan, where she could be found attending Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera or inspecting a round of French triple crème at Zabarâs.
After her mother passed, Julie discovered a keepsake book filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva. This long-hidden memento was the first clue to the secret pain that Julieâs mother had carried as a refugee and immigrant from Nazi-occupied Vienna, shining a light on âa story of political repression, terror, and dissolution...full of astonishing and unlikely twists of fate showing again that individual destiny may be the greatest mystery of allâ (Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance).
âA gripping and intimate wartime account with piercing contemporary relevanceâ (Kirkus Reviews), Eva and Eve lyrically traces one womanâs search for her motherâs lost childhood while revealing the resilience of our forebears and the sacrifices that ordinary people are called to make during historyâs darkest hours.