The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing

I have received a copy of this book by Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.

Today's post is on The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing by Adam P. Frankel. it is 288 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover is red with a leafless tree in the center. The intended reader is someone who is interested in family memoirs. There is mild foul language, discussions of sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines—a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.
In the midst of piecing together a story of inherited familial trauma, Adam discovered he was only half of who he thought he was, knowledge that raised essential questions of identity. Who was he, if not his father’s son? If not part of a rich heritage of writers and public servants? Does it matter? What defines a family’s bonds? What will he pass on to his own children? To rewrite his story in truth and to build a life for his own young family, Adam had to navigate his pain to find answers and a way forward.
Throughout this journey into the past, his family’s psyche, and his own understanding of identity, Adam comes to realize that while the nature of our families’ traumas may vary, each of us is faced with the same choice. We can turn away from what we’ve inherited—or, we can confront it, in the hopes of moving on and stopping that trauma from inflicting pain on future generations. The stories Adam shares with us in The Survivors are about the ways the past can haunt our future, the resilience that can be found on the other side of trauma, and the good that can come from things that are unspeakably bad.

Review- An memoir about a family, trauma, mental illness, and finding the people you love. The two sides of Adam Frankel's family are very different and the differences are extremely important to the story of his life. Frankel's mother's side of the family survived the Holocaust and of course were changed by it. But most of the story is not about the Holocaust but about Frankel discovering that the man who raised him was not his biological father. He is deeply affected by this and every relationship in his life is changed by the knowledge. Add in his mother's untreated mental illness and his life has so much chaos in it. Frankel is very honest about what happened in his life, his responsibility in it, and how his mother's mental illness affected him. It is very open but I had some trouble connecting with Frankel. I did not dislike him but I felt some distance between me the reader and Frankel is the writer. But it was still an interesting read and if you like family memoirs then you should give this one a look.

I give this book a Three out of Five stars.