A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile

Agate Nesaule has captured the horror of war and its aftermath on the life of a young woman who was there.
She writes with the authority of one who has experienced the horrible effects of war on the psyche of one who is young and impressionable. Her realism is so that we feel the suffering that she experiences.
Although a story of trauma and sadness it does have a hopeful conclusion.
A fine story, well written, and intriguing.

Others have argued the authenticity of Ms. Nesaule's account of life in the concentration camps; indeed, the author herself voices her own uncertainty of her story, confessing to much she has forgotten. Still, it is a story worth reading. American born, I've never found myself, or even thought to imagine myself, in a situation where I have feared for my life and the lives of my family.

Ms. Nesaule's account, which she manages to relate with frank detachment, is disturbing. Who among us, in America, can understand how it feels to be kept in a basement, never knowing when it might be our turn to be taken behind the partition to be raped, or taken outside to be lined up to be shot? To be cuffed or threatened for whispering to a sibling?

During her ordeal, the young Agate learns the futility of prayer, that what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger, and that wounds such as those she endured never heal; although by the end of the book, after a failed long-term marriage left her the victim, she finds a semblance of peace.

Despite its obvious flaws-among others, Ms. Nesaule's son Boris is virtually non-existent and her portrayal of her husband Joe is far too one-dimensional... his dialogue is stilted and comprised of only a few phrases, which she uses time and time again (perhaps these are all she recalls after two decades of emotional abuse-A Woman In Amber is a compelling read. Whether more fiction than fact is immaterial. Ms. Nesaule's simple message is this: her suffering, as is the suffering of all men and women since the dawn of civilization, is but a single page in the history of mankind. How sad that man cannot get along with himself, sadder still that he keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and never learns.

Recommended.

The families of both of my parents fled Latvia and the invading Russians when my parents were young. This book actually is what got my mother and me talking about her childhood in Latvia and in the DP camps, so in that sense, it is a very important book. Everyone I've ever talked to, though, has had the same general opinion of Ms. Nesaule's book -- she exaggerates a bit. She makes things up. She does say this in the introduction: "I have forgotten some things..." This book leaves a good -impression- of what life was like, but it should not be read as Gospel.

Being of Latvian heritage myself, perhaps it is impossible for me to read Nesaule's book as anyone else of a different heritage might. I have grown up on stories that are but variations on a theme to this one. My first language was Latvian, my first book was Latvian, my own first efforts in creative writing were in the Latvian language. Indeed, I have just participated in a literary reading of Latvian authors at the 11th Latvian Song Festival in Chicago, Illinois, where I had the honor of sharing the podium with Agate Nesaule. Is it possible for me to turn the pages of "Woman in Amber" without a deeply ingrained bias? Perhaps not. But I can say that these pages, these words, these memories, resonated profoundly with me. The war experience in many ways, however, is a suffering and a horror that crosses all lines of ethnicity, all borders of nationality. For this reason, I believe this is an important account for a far larger audience than just the Latvian reader; I am thrilled that this book was written first in English, then translated into, I believe, seven other languages.

Latvia is a tiny but beautiful country on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The Latvian language is one of the oldest still in existence. The country's history is one of the most war-torn and ravaged of any country anywhere - although it has existed for many, many centuries, Latvia has been independent, free of occupation by other armies, for only a wink in time. If this nation can be proud of anything, it can be proud of its ability to survive even the cruelest and most oppressive conditions. This memoir, "Woman in Amber," opens a small window of light shed on how such a people survive. Even more precisely, it gives an account of how a very young girl can survive - losing her home, losing her family, conditions of hunger, rape, pillage, exile, and the terrifying experience of being a stranger in an immense and completely alien country where the culture and language are all new and strange. Most memoirs of war and battlefields are written by men. It is particularly interesting to read a different kind of account, from the perspective of a woman. If soldiers on a battlefield suffer, there is a quieter, less evident suffering that happens behind the front lines, and this memoir reveals, painfully and movingly, the no less violent and scarring battles that happen there.

Agate Nesaule's memoir is a couragous sharing of the experiences she endured - not just during World War II, but for many years following the war. Long after the sounds of war have died down, the wounds are still bloodied and pulsating with pain. Healing can often take a lifetime. My respect to this author for sharing her experience, and my hope that it has offered her healing. This is a book I am proud to recommend to both my Latvian friends as well as my non-Latvian friends.

Suffering is not good for the soul, no matter what anyone tells you. There is nothing redemptive about it. The pain continues long after the actual experience is over. You do not become a better person because you have endured much, though perhaps your patience increases. No, we don't learn lessons from reading about others' suffering, even from such a well-written book as Nesaule's. Her life is not an example to anybody. Certainly not an inspiration. If you keep your eyes and ears open in life, and don't watch too much TV, you cannot but become aware of a huge amount of suffering and pain in the world. Whether abroad---during World War II, in Korea or Vietnam, or in the myriad wars and dictatorships of the late 20th century-or at home thanks to racism, poverty, substance abuse or simple human cruelty, we should be no strangers to the tragedy of life on earth.

A WOMAN IN AMBER describes a life broken by war, dislocation and brutality. Darkness surrounded Agate Nesaule at an early age, a gray cloud that did not begin to dissipate for nearly forty years. After early childhood happiness in Latvia, her homeland was occupied by Russians, then Germans, then Russians again. Obviously fearing the Russians more, when Soviet forces loomed on the horizon in 1944, the family fled to Germany, a refugee camp where Jews and Gypsies were sought out and taken away. Then came the raping, thieving Soviet forces, a dramatic escape to the British-occupied zone of Berlin, and five years of life in the DP camps. In 1950, the whole family, still miraculously together, emigrated to Indianapolis to begin the hard process of rebuilding a life in America. Life in the slums, little income, sub-standard housing, but at least the chance for education followed. Nesaule made a disastrous marriage to a repulsive, manipulative slob of an American, perhaps the worst choice possible, and stayed with him for over twenty years. Through everything, she longed for a close, open relationship with others, especially her mother, but could not achieve it, thanks to her own unfortunate choices. At last, divorced, she reached some peace thanks to an understanding psychiatrist and a decent, loving man. For years, the writer could not distinguish normal authority and everyday forms of social control from stark, cruel, and arbitrary forms found in squalid refugee camps, under foreign military regimes, or in the hearts of parents in the most extreme situations. At times, Nesaule seems to take a perverse pleasure in her pain, but I felt that this emerges due to her extreme honesty, her attempt to plumb the depths of her feeling in order to arrange it on paper, and remove from her psyche all those feelings warped and twisted by war, by the desperation of her childhood.

The question a reader must ask, as does the author, is how many more Agates are there out there? In Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, Chechnya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Angola, Congo, Liberia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Timor, Colombia, Nicaragua, and dozens of other places ? A WOMAN IN AMBER is the moving story of a sensitive personality crushed by hardship and brutality, skewed to accept ruinous relationships because all self-confidence had been lost. The use of dreams to further self-understanding is extremely effective. As a Jew, whose extended family in the Baltic area was totally annihilated by the Germans (and their local minions) during WW II, I was not inclined to be sympathetic at first to a Latvian woman whose family, after all, must have lived comfortably through that same time, but I soon relented as I read on because self-pity is entirely absent. Suffering is universal, even if human brotherhood, of which we dream, is nowhere in sight. Perhaps sharing that suffering is, indeed, the very brotherhood we seek. Bleak conclusion. Read this book, you can't fail to be moved by the honesty and lack of nationalistic drivel.