Hoffman's latest work transports us to Berlin in 1941. It is during this time, one of the darkest in humanity, that three women must rely on their courage in order to survive.
In order to keep her twelve-year-old daughter away from the Nazi regime, Hanni Kohn sends her away to stay with some distant cousins. She visits an illustrious rabbi to seek his help. While pleading her case to the Rabbi's wife, their daughter, Ettie, overhears and secretly offers help. Ettie creates a golem—a mystical Jewish creature—to protect Lea at all costs. When Ava, the golem, is brought to life, she is forever connected to Ettie her maker, and Lea, the girl she is created to keep safe.
With evil lurking everywhere, the girls face unsurmountable loss, and sacrifice so much for love.
We meet some extraordinary characters that take us on an astonishing journey of love and loss, while demonstrating incredible courage and resilience. Paramount is a mother's love for her daughter and the lengths a mother will go to protect her child. All of this is sprinkled with Hoffman's signature magical realism.
This is a fresh take on the Holocaust and there are elements that Hoffman shines a light on, like the border crossings of many children, that many are not aware of. She educates and elevates her readers. Hoffman's writing transcends. It is elegant and haunting, and quite simply, stunning.
In this book, all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is forever.
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Hoffman's first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.
Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.
Hoffman has written a number of novels for young adults, including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and the New York Times bestseller The Ice Queen. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.
Her works have been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman's novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.
She currently lives in Boston and New York.
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