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

So often the tale of war is told from the standpoint of the brave soldiers or the cowardly soldiers or the stupid soldiers. Here is a book about war told from the woman's point of view. Women are so vulnerable, and so often the innocent victims along with their children of the cruelties of the soldiers.

This was the first history I read about war from the perspective of a woman. I think the thing I fould most shocking about Ms. Nesuale's story is that she survived the Nazi occupation relatively entact, only to suffer dreadfully at the hands of the liberating Russian army.

The book has it's harrowing moments, but it is extremely uplifting. Ms. Nesaule survived the war and it's aftermath, moving to the U.S. as a refugee immigrant. She went on to become an educated woman, and today is happily married and a college professor at the University of Wisconsin. Her story is worth reading.

"A Woman in Amber" is a touching and sensitive memoir of a young girl's escape from war-torn Latvia. Agate Nesaule left home with her family in 1944 along with more than one hundred fifty thousand other Latvians seeking refuge in the West. They were fleeing the oncoming Red Army and a resumption of the horrific Soviet occupation of 1940-41. Nesaule's family got only as far as what became the Soviet zone of Germany, a place of desperation and violence. Finally as the war neared an end they managed to reach the relative safety of a displaced persons camp in Berlin and eventually to secure passage to the United States. The second half of the book recounts the difficult experience of Nesaule and her family in starting their lives over in a new land. This book is not a history of the emigration but simply one woman's heartfelt story. Even amongst the description of all the pain and loss, there are scenes of heroism and humor. Once I started reading "A Woman in Amber," I could hardly put it down until I was finished. Highly recommended.

The title of this book is a remarkable, symbolically apt appellation, "A Woman in Amber"; imagine the imprisoned feeling. But the beauty of amber, as in the beauty of this book, is that light can be seen through it. After reading Dr. Nesaule's book, I purchased it as a gift for Latvian friends. My Indian women friends have used this book as study material in their bookclub and my Irish friends have received great solace from the work because of its honesty in its disclosure about the needs, desires, and trust that may or may not exist between a mother and a daughter. Self-honesty begets self-truth, and this book is an honest exploration that seeks whatever truths can be found between a mother and a daughter under the most extreme conditions - war and its aftermath. If you want language without pretense painting a daughter's portrait of her life's process that searches for solid ground on which to plant her understanding of forced exile - both physical and familial, then read this book. It is not a history book nor is it a travel guide to Eastern Europe. It is the finished product of a search many of us give up on after a parent's death. The book is a singular image of one Latvian family exiled by war; its deeper content however, is about the universal tugs of emotional wars that exist in many families. I questioned myself after reading the book and wondered how truthful I could be on paper if writing about my mother who left this world early with many of her own questions unanswered: I hasten to try. The author's up front disclosure about her own questioning of what truth in one's memory really is, is an honest prelude to this self-investigation. My treasured, older Latvian friends have discovered that "A Woman in Amber" was the #1 best seller in Latvia in 1998, and in reference to some critiques of the book, one friend recited a line she learned in a Latvian school during the war: "It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it." - Goethe. Dr. Nesaule is a courageous writer who had the guts to disembowel learned, protective protocol that can distort self-truth in any culture. I thank her for writing this book and wish her continued success.

I am a Latvian, close to Ms. Nesaules age, born in Latvia and I also spent years in Displaced Persons camps.

Unlike Ms. Nesaule, all my family and family friends shared memories good and bad of the war and of the refugee camps. We have several huge photo albums that include a lot of photos from the camps.

A book should be a memoir or fiction. If its a mix, then perhaps there needs to be some indicator as to what is memory and what is writers embellishment.

Ms. Nesaules opening statements such as "I have uncertainties about this story..." "...there is so much that I have forgotten or I never knew or understood." "No one in my family wants to talk about the war..." "And no matter how hard I try I cannot force myself to do research." "I can only tell what I remember. I have to speculate and guess, even to invent in order to give the story coherence and shape." "The matter of inventing requires a special note." Say what? This is a memior??

For someone who couldn't force herself to do research about DP camps, Ms. Nesaule seems to find no trouble in doing research about concentration camps. Reading and memorizing "The Diary Of Anne Frank", obsessing on photos of concentration camps (page 174) makes me question just what is really going on. The book of Ms. Nesaule brings up more questions than answers.

Yes, the refugee camps were like the war itself, horrific, dehumanizing and demoralizing, but they were NOT concentration camps. Our pain and horrors were real enough not to need any writers embellishments.

Page 179: "She tempers my fathers longing to return to Latvia by reminders of women having to do backbreaking work with out the benefit of running water, central heating and electrical appliances."

Page 184: "How can I say I dislike the Russians? My mother stills morns leaving 'dear mother Russia'..."

These statements show an almost deep contempt and ignorance about the true Latvia. Life was certainly hard on the small farms in Latvia as it was in 'dear mother Russia', but that was not the case for everyone.

Before World War II Latvia had one of the highest education rates, per capita, in the world. Riga was known as 'the Little Paris of the North' during Latvia's first independence. I for one find A Woman In Amber very offensive, full of misinformation ramdomly mixed with accounts resembling actual events.

For more information on Latvia, one might want to read the following: "A Guide to Latvia" by Inara Punga and William Hough; "The Northern Crusades" by Eric Christiansen; "The Latvians: A Short History" by Andrejs Plakans; and "The Testemony of Lives" by Vieda Skultans.

I read this book upon the recommendation of a friend. This is very much the type of book I enjoy, but this book left me wondering about the fact that many things were unexplained. I didn't feel that even at this juncture the author had some to terms with the events of her past.

It seemed to me to be bits and pieces of what happened but I wanted to know more about the "why's" in the story. It was as though her son Boris was mentioned but never a part of her life. Her father was a distant character, too. I finished the book but was left puzzled about many parts of it.