A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family. • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!Based on the author’s own family letters, Send for Me tells the story of Annelise, a young … CLUB PICK!
Based on the author’s own family letters, Send for Me tells the story of Annelise, a young woman in prewar Germany. Growing up working at her parents’ popular bakery, she’s always imagined a future full of delicious possibilities. Despite rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious. But as she falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer. Soon Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.
Two generations later in a small Midwestern city, Annelise’s granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of the letters her great-grandmother wrote from Germany after Annelise’s departure, she sees the history of her family’s sacrifices in a new light, leading her to question whether she can still honor the past while planning for her future.
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Send For Me is a rare and beautiful novel. In luminous prose, with great economy and precision, Lauren Fox twines together two stories: one that explores both the menace and the day-to-day ordinariness of life in Germany under Hitler, and its aftermath, and one that captures the yearning and intensity of youth in the present day. While sorrow may be inevitable, Fox seems to say, life is also threaded with hope and joy and human connection. I loved this book.
Spanning generations and continents, from pre-WWII Germany to current day midwestern America, Send For Me is a richly imagined testament to the ties that bind: the intricate web of familial duty, the profound love between mothers and daughters, and the tension between honoring one’s heritage while not being defined by it. Lauren Fox’s first historical novel is moving, heartfelt, and filled with love.
Send For Me is stunning in its tender poignancy. A beautifully told story of intergenerational loves and sorrows, the long shadow of memory, and how hope can repair the heartache woven into a family’s DNA.
Imbued with lyrical prose, Send For Me is a beautiful tale of heartbreak and renewal, and of the love and loss we carry with us, generation after generation.
I felt like the story only skimmed the surface and I didn’t have a chance to really connect with the story. This story is a bit different from all the other historical fiction books I have read about World War II and the Holocaust. Set in dual timelines, we first meet Anneliese, a young girl growing up in Germany in the late 1930’s. We see more of what happened before the camps; how the Nazi’s slowly closed the noose around the Jews’ necks by first kicking them out of schools and closing their businesses. Anneliese and her husband, Walter, are lucky enough to emigrate to America. But, at the cost of leaving their families behind. Connection with family is what centers Lauren Fox’s latest novel, Send For Me. I feel it jumped around too much and the abrupt ending feels very unfinished.
Send For Me is a uniquely written story set primarily in pre-WWII Germany. It was very character driven and while it is based on real events, it wasn’t the historical fiction novel I was expecting. Instead, it is a story of family, of sacrifice, of difficult choices. The story is told using excerpts of letters written by the author’s great-grandparents. They were heartbreaking, the fear and desperation to escape evident. I felt for Annelise and for the parents she left behind.
However, I didn’t enjoy the storyline of Clare, the granddaughter who discovers the letters. I felt her story was flat, uninteresting, and the ending completely rushed. I realize her story wasn’t the heart of the novel, but since it was included I feel like it should have been more developed. I honestly think the overall story would have been better without Clare’s point of view.
Overall, 3 stars.
I kept hoping for more. Not all that interesting.
This is a story of Annalise and her family. As a young girl, Annalise was the target of her mother’s not-picking, always pushing Annalise. They were a Jewish family in Germany, and owned a bakery. In the late 1930s, Annalise had married Walter and had a child, Ruthie. Annalise’s friend, Sofie, had already told her they could no longer be friends, because Annalise was Jewish. Her parents were losing business at the bakery, and Annalise felt the disdain of others.
Annalise, Walter, and Ruthie emigrate to the US, where relatives of Walter agree to sponsor them. Walters friend, Oskar, also moved to the US. It is difficult living so far away from her parents. Klara, Annalise‘s mother, corresponds via letters, always sending her love to Ruthie, but also telling Annalise of the failures to get their papers correct.
Years later, Clare, Annalise’s granddaughter struggles in relationships, but also, feels a strong tote to her family.
This is a story of love between families, the difficulty of leaving everything you knew behind, including family, continuing traditions, and building new lives.
I liked how the author sprinkled in letters from her ancestors into the story. It made it authentic. While not directly about the way and the Holocaust, it still reflects the horrors of prejudice, and what racism takes from all of us.
Send for Me, I read this book because I really was so captivated by the Blurb and the reviews I was reading all around. as a fan of WW2 books, I was ready to immerse myself in the world of Send for me.
This is the story of Annelise, her granddaughter Clare found some letters about her grandmother’s past, something that will change her life forever. Immerse in Annelise story we get to find out what happened during those days, Annelise was working with her family in a bakery trying to survive like any other family but when the war started everything, every dream, every hope started to fail, her life was in danger as well as the life of many Jews in Germany but life gave her the opportunity to go to America with her husband and daughter to try to start a new life out of the evilness of the Nazis.
Even in America, things were never the same, she still had to work hard to have a roof and food to eat but what really broke me of this book was the letters of Annelise’s mother, I always felt like Annelise was not really making any effort to save her family in Germany, the sadness and desperation of her mother in each letter really broke me, I really don’t know if the writer did this intentionally or it was a product of my imagination but I felt like Annelise never did something strong enough to help them, she was more immersed in her new life and somehow it felt like she distanced herself emotionally from what was happening.
at one point the author hints like Annelise is having doubts about her feelings towards her husband and that also kind of made me feel out of sorts.
Send for Me it’s a good book but something really was missing and I found myself at all times very depress and sad with the story, the feeling was always like that, not even at the last minutes of the book I felt any happiness in the characters, it was like the book was eternal sadness.
The characters never smile or at least I don’t recall any happiness or any moment of joy.. as a reader there was not a part in the story that I felt enjoyable.. at one point the book ended so abruptly that I didn’t get the feeling of closure for many of the characters. At some point, we were talking about the destiny of Annelise, and in the next chapter, we were at the end of the book talking about Claire so at that moment I really felt like the stories of many characters were never concluded.
I have mixed feelings about the story but I’m determined to give this book a second chance and see if I missed something or definitely is a very sad book.
Overall I suggest you give it a chance and make your own conclusions