Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

THE LETTERS PROJECT

Eleanor Reissa

A Daughter's Journey

The Letters Project is about big history, the Holocaust, but it is also an extraordinarily intimate personal narrative - a rare blend of informative, poignant, excruciating, startling, humorous, and ultimately inspiring storytelling.

In 1986, upon the death of her mother, Eleanor Reissa - an acclaimed actress, singer, director, writer, and contemporary Yiddish performer - was stunned to discover a stash of 56 letters written in German, hidden inside an old leather purse she had never seen before. The discovery of this correspondence, from her father to her mother, dating back to 1949, was a proverbial Pandora's Box, launching her on a quest that spanned continents and decades and led to truths about her late father, a survivor of Auschwitz, whom she had only known as an ailing, broken man. It was not until 2018 - forty years later - that she had the letters translated.

Engaging and intimate - owing to the personal history she uncovers and painstakingly records - The Letters Project is by turns a daughter's love letter to the father she thought she knew, as well as a riveting saga of personal and painful revelation and a cautionary tale for those who do not heed the lessons of history.

Eleanor Reissa is Brooklyn born and bred, and attended public schools from kindergarten through college. She is a Tony-nominated director, a Broadway and television actress, a prize-winning playwright, a former artistic director of the world's oldest Yiddish theater, and a singer who has performed in every major venue in New York City and in festivals around the world. She is a storyteller in English and Yiddish and is the daughter of parents who were Holocaust fighters.

Available products
Book Published 2022-01-18 by Post Hill Press

Comments

Among the great number of personal takes on the Holocaust, Eleanor Reissa's book really stands out, both for its intelligence and courage and for the unique way she braids the inter-generational stories together .In this brutal, poignant, and searingly honest book, Reissa simultaneously pieces together the unfathomable story of her Holocaust survivor father, reckons with the guilt she came to feel as his uncomprehending American daughter, and manages somehow to find insight and purpose in the ashes. This extraordinary account of two parallel journeys will stick with anyone privileged enough to read it.

Eleanor Reissa has written a gritty, fearless yet funny memoir about herself, her family, and the Holocaust. Once I began reading it, I was completely swept away until the journey ended.I was moved by the power of this uniquely personal yet universal story.

Mehr als 40 Jahre nach dem Tod ihres Vaters macht sich die New Yorker Broadway-Sängerin Eleanor Reissa auf, seine Spuren in Stuttgart zu finden. Hier hat er gelebt, gearbeitet, geliebt, von hier wurden er und seine Familie ins KZ deportiert. Und als einziger Überlebender ist er zurückgekommen. ... Read more...

'The Holocaust,' Eleanor Reissa writes in this unforgettable and courageous book, 'is attached to me like my skin and I would be formless without it.' A very personal story that is also a fundamental one of a woman trying to make sense of her life and family and of the shadows that go back before she was born. There is plenty of feeling and sentiment but it never feels sentimental. Her inimitable wit leavens the sadder scenes. This journey of discovery is riveting, told with tender insight, at times heartbreaking and at times heartwarming just like the Yiddish songs that have delighted Ms. Reissa's audiences.

The Letters Project is a wonderful book - funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately transcendent. Eleanor Reissa's journey back into her family's past makes for a gripping - and very human - international mystery. I highly recommend it.