Dual timeline, fictionalised account of life for Jewish families at the cusp of WWII, inspired by and featuring the letters the author discovered from her great-grandparents.

Initially, as anti-Jewish sentiment emerges, Annalise and her family who are not very religious do not think it will affect them. As the threat grows, Annalise is fortunate to be able to leave Germany with her husband and daughter. However, her parents remain in Germany, and through their letters we witness the difficulties they encounter trying to obtain the necessary paperwork as Annalise's struggles to adapt to her new life.

In the present day, Annalise's granddaughter, discovers their correspondence and reevaluates her own life and the sacrifices of the previous generations.

This is a beautifully written book based on letters from the authors own family. We look at three generations of the same family. In Germany, pre-WW2, Annaliese works at her family’s bakery in Feldenheim Germany. There are rumours of anti-Jewish feeling spreading through the country,butAnnelise doesn’t believe it will reach her community or family. They’re not even very religious.Annelise has other big life changes to think about because she’s fallen in love. As she marries and has her first daughter, things start to change. Customers start to boycott the bakery, people she’s known all her life stop talking to her, and then the violence starts - a brick through the bakery window really drives it home that her family are becoming the targets for this anti-Jewish movement. Knowing they must leave,Annelise and her husband get a chance. They’re offered a new life in America, but heartbreakingly they must leave her parents behind.

Years later we’re in America’s mid-West and Annelise’s granddaughter Clare stumbles across her grandmother’s letters. For the first time she’s faced with the sacrifices her grandparents made to give her the life she has. It’s interesting to see the differences between a modern young woman in the US, and a young immigrant facing a move to a country that doesn’t even speak the same language. Not to mention the heart-wrenching decision to leave her parents to an uncertain fate. It was interesting to see how the knowledge of her family’s past affects Clare. Even though they managed to escape before the Holocaust, the thought of leaving family behind, then finding out what happened to Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is devastating. The sense of guilt there is in surviving, and then thriving a generation later, must have been unbearable. Knowing someone sacrificed themselves for you must make you question everything. Are you even valuing this life enough? The letters were very moving and I really enjoyed this emotional take on four generations of a women in this extraordinary family.

I received early access to this book, by Lauren Fox. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher as it was great to delve into this historical fiction read. I was new to reading Lauren’s Fox’s work but will look for more now.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author Lauren Fox.
This story was absolutely heartbreaking, vividly told and completely involving.
I will never get bored of reading stories about this darkest period of human history, and knowing that the foundation of this book is based on the author's Grandmother and Great-Grandmother's letters makes it all the more poignant. Devastating but hopeful, would highly recommend.

Realistically depicted tale of what it meant to be a normal family who just happened to be on the wrong side of the lines in Nazi Germany. A warts and all tale of family love and loyalty set amongst the baffling changes and infinite struggles of that time. The themes cross generations, showing the continuing impact right up to the present day.

An interesting piece of historical fiction based on the author’s own history discovered in family letters. Annelise and her young family, aware of the growing anti-semitism in 1930s Germany are torn between leaving a business under threat of being seized and her mother and father behind and heading for new life in the US. Decades later Annelise’s granddaughter discovers family letters which give in an insight to the love between mother and daughter and the trauma of being separated due to war.

Thanks to Netgalley the author and publishers Vintage for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

This was a bit of a different type of book than I’m used to reading. But the cover drew me in and I knew I had to know more
Premise
Germany 1930s. Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumours that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter Ruthie, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronise the bakery. Luckily 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, Ruthie's daughter and Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future.

I love these stories that tie in both past and present. We are first introduced to Annelise and we follow her journey to escape and come to America and then we meet her granddaughter Claire who discovers letters from her grandmother and learns more about her family than she ever knew imaginable. So it really come down to her making a huge choice and it gripped me to the edge of my seat what her decision was going to be for her future.

Send For Me is an emotionally charged look at the lives of three generations of women: Klara, Annalise and Clare. Annalise is German, a Jew living in Feldenheim at a time when it was dangerous to be Jewish - whether you were a practicing Jew or not. After years of persecution, Annalise, her husband and her toddler daughter, manage to get permission to leave for the USA. But she has to leave her parents behind.

This was a different take on other books set at this time, and I liked that about it very much. I haven’t read many books about those who managed to escape the Nazi regime and immigrate to safe countries before the Holocaust really began. But it’s no less saddening for that. Annalise desperately misses her parents, and life is so utterly different in the US.

The story swaps between Annalise and her granddaughter, Clare, whose life couldn’t have been any more different. Clare has the much more liberated life of an American woman - whether that’s what she really wants, remains to be seen.

I really enjoyed seeing the juxtaposition between a 1930s immigrant and a modern young woman. Annalise’s fear of being in a big city with no English is palpable - I panicked along with her. It must be so scary to move somewhere that’s completely different to your own life experience, and not even have a common language - something that people have always had to endure for their own safety throughout the ages.

This is a really moving novel, made more so when I learnt that the letters between Annalise and her mother Klara were real - just that the names were changed.

During the 1930s life in Germany became harder for the Jews and when Walter is warned by a childhood friend that he will be arrested, he and his wife Annelise and daughter Ruth decide to leave for America. They have been sponsored by a distant relative of Walter's. Once in America they try to get Annelise's parents to join them but the paperwork is always turned down.
Many years later Annelise's grand-daughter, Clare finds the letters that her Great Grandmother Klara had sent from Germany whilst trying to get permission to leave Germany.
Based on the true story of the authors own relatives, this is a fictionalised version of the story.

Based on a true story, this definitely gave the book an interesting element. However, I found the structure confusing and distracting. It was clear there was a lot of emotion in the book and a definite story but it could have been executed a little better.

This read like a memoir, and when I read the author's notes at the end, I realised that although it is a novel, it is based on letters from the author's great grandmother in Germany to her mother who moved to Milwaukee in 1938. The book is the gentle story of a Jewish family. Of their thoughts and feelings in 1930s Germany when Anneliese and her husband Walter make their escape to the United States. It is different from other novels of its time in that it doesn't tell the harsh, terrifying story of the holocaust - although this is alluded to when looking back at what became of old friends- rather we see a professional family with their business being eroded as they are no longer allowed to move about freely. We see a young girl grow into a woman, get married and have a daughter. Her relationship with her mother, although strong, seems almost forgotten as she arrives in safety. Although Anneliese knew the troubles were coming and experienced some of them, she remains the selfish, spoilt daughter who doesn't push hard enough for her parents to join her in the USA. She loves her parents but how could she really envisage what would happen in her beloved Germany? As her grandaughter looks back on the family life and uses it to help her move on, it really is a fascinating, gently told account of life. #netgalley #sendforme

This review is going to be messy and a little confusing, but I can't categorise my thoughts at the moment. What an incredibly heartbreaking and haunting novel. I'm a child of immigrants, I come from several families with pain in their pasts. Fleeing Europe, fleeing Asia, leaving America, my family is no stranger to leaving countries and homes and lives behind. I connected with this novel, with all the characters, on such a personal level. Every single generation was incredibly complex, their stories woven so carefully that I could find parts of myself or my history buried within them. For being a shorter novel, just under 300 pages, this packed such a punch. I felt as if I was reading forever, in the best way. I didn't want this story to end, I wanted to know exactly what happened to who. Especially the last generation, where I saw myself so clearly represented and understood, I wanted to know if things would be okay for her. Fox has written a novel that will stay with me. Her talent with words is remarkable. This was pure perfection, a part of my heart has been left between the pages of this story. I feel heard. I feel understood. Most importantly, I feel grateful that I stumbled across this book.

Send for me is a captivating novel about Clare, a young woman who discovers the letters of her grandmother and Annelise who is the above-mentioned grandmother. The narration was on point with the multiple PoVs and timelines. But sometimes the chapters felt incomplete before moving to the other PoV/timeline. I simply loved the letters the author had woven through the book which had actually been written by her great-grandmother.

Overall it was a sad yet beautiful book focusing on cherishing the memories we have with our loved ones along with women getting through their lives making the best of any situation.

I have heard a lot about Lauren Fox’s books and I feel that this was a letdown for me. But this is not going to stop me from discovering her other works.

Lauren Fox found a box full of letters written between her grandmother and great-grandmother that they exchanged during moments of difficulties for the Jews in Germany after the rise of Nazism. It took her a while to translate those letters and finally decided to write down her family history from those letters into the form of a novel. Send for Me is a partly historical fiction inspired by real-life events that happened in Nazi Germany, and it is also in some part chronicling the family history of the author who was forced to migrate to the United States to avoid the persecutions toward the Jews.

The narrative in this book is focused on Annelise, who had to leave her home in Feldenheim to emigrate to Milwaukee in the 1930s. She came from a loving family that always took care of her, with her father as the bakery of the neighbourhood. Annelise married in her early 20s to Walter, a shoemaker who was just recently divorced after his first wife left him solely since he was a Jew. They had their daughter, Ruthie, in Germany. But soon, the situation turned more dangerous for the Jews to live in Germany with many racial policies introduced by Hitler’s regime that prohibit the Jews to continue doing business. Eventually, one of Walter’s cousins who lived in Milwaukee in the US agreed to sponsor them and provide an affidavit to help them leave.

The other minor narrative is reserved for Clare, Annelise’s granddaughter who lives in the 21st century and currently struggles with her love for Matthew, a British researcher who is doing his research in the US. Matthew is divorced, with a son who lives in his apartment in London with his ex-wife. In between the two alternate timelines of a refugee’s life as led by Annelise with his former émigrés and the modern life of Clare, the two of them seem to entertain a similar message: that love could overcome many problems in our lives.

In between the chapters, the author filled in the space with letters sent by Annelise’s parents from Germany after she managed to escape. The letters kinda provide interesting footnotes to the events that Annelise had to face in each part of the story. In some chapters, the letters even exude emotional grief as her father tells the story of the passing of Klara, Annelise’s mother after they failed to obtain a visa to leave Germany.

One particular thing that disturbed my experience of reading this novel is the way it is structured, as the timelines could jump frequently between Annelise’s life and Clare’s life, sometimes without any clear explanation between the jumpings. I understand that it might have the purpose of setting up parables between the two characters who miss their mothers and finally had to experience motherhood themselves as they turned into adults. But I think it would probably be confusing for some readers to read the stories as not a straight timeline and frequent visits between two different characters and timelines.

The issue discussed in this book is interesting if compared to much historical fiction about the Second World War already in the market. Many authors write about the experience of the Jewish émigrés who moved into the New World, so this book might be an interesting addition to this important period of the 20th century. Much more so, since many of Lauren Fox's resources to write this book comes from a firsthand account of the letters exchanged between her great-grandmother and grandmother.

A lovely historical fiction book that left a lot of loose ends (on purpose) but I would love to fall back into this sad story

Beautiful and devastating. This novel is about a mother and daughter separated by the growing antisemitism in Germany in the years before WWII. It delves into the complex relationships between mothers and daughters and the immense bond between them. It is, of course, a heartbreaking book, but in a way that is understated and elegant.

A truly captivating novel so well written.A novel that travels from pre war Germany to present day America.A book about family a lyrically written novel.#netgalley #johnmurraypress

Send For Me by Lauren Fox is an enchanting read. It has timelines alternating between pre-war Germany and present day America and family members through the generations. Lose yourself in this novel.

Set in the years leading up to WW2, with the build-up of anti-Jewish feeling in Germany, the curtailing of the freedoms of Jewish people, the danger to their lives. Annelise and her family make it to the US, and then try to arrange escape from Germany for her parents. The book follows Annelise’s life, and that of her daughter and grand-daughter. Interleaved between the chapters are lines addressed to Annelise, we realise they are excerpts from the letters sent by her mother, trapped in Germany by illness and cruel bureaucracy. The story is real, and the letters are real. Especially poignant is the contrast between the friendly and caring community life in a small German town at the beginning of the thirties, and the suspicion and alienation which is planted there and festers through the decade.

Send For Me by Lauren Fox has timelines alternating between pre-war Germany and present day America and the impact that familial separation has on family members through the generations.