baronessekat | 2024 Reading Challenge: A book with a one word title you had to look up in the dictionary

Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 stars but I rounded up

This is the sweeping tale of Rebecca Cohen. We meet her as a Jewish girl growing up in Istanbul at the turn of the 20th century. Her family is well to do and she could want for nothing. But time and circumstances (increase in anti-Semitism and her father's gambling habit) force the family to leave the home they have known for generations to move to Barcelona.

While in Spain, Rebecca becomes self-sufficient as a dressmaker, marries and becomes a mother to two boys. After becoming a widow and once again facing increased anti-Semitism factions, she remarries her childhood best friend's widower and moves to New York City, where she finds herself once again in a city she doesn't know, surrounded by people who see her as an outsider and also the step-mother to a young girl with developmental difficulties.

But she is determined to survive and thrive.

+++

This was an amazing story, brought to the page by the real-life experiences of the author's grandmother.

I highly recommend.

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