Customer Reviews

While We're Far Apart

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Loved it, loved it, loved it! Lynn Austin has a way of picturing a scene that simply draws you in. She has the ability to describe an event in such concise detail without the usual "fluff" that many writers bore me with. I could not put down the book. This was the first time I've read Lynn Austin, but it certainly will not be the last. Karen Lynch

While We're Far Apart by Lynn Austin is a wonderful story. I've mentioned before how much I love "war stories" and this is a love story during WWII. This story gives a good perspective of the history of that era, and it paints a good picture. Austin is an amazing writer, and this is the kind of story that I will read again down the road. A classic in the making. Classics are the books you want to read over and over again. And with this book , I do.

This book is about 3 families and their struggles during WWII. A Jewish man is mad at God for taking his wife. Two children are traumatized by their mothers death and decision by their Dad to go to war. Adult Penny and her sister were verbally abused by their parents. This book was really hard to read because of the emotional pounding everyone gets for the first half of the book. No bright spots, just emotional beating after beating. It lightens up a little after that, and the last 3 chapters everything was tied up in a tidy bow. Except for the Jewish man, I felt that all of the trauma was too easily overcome and settled. This is not one of Lynn Austin's better books, it was a relief when I finally got to the end.

The novel opens in Brooklyn, New York in the fall of 1943 during WWII. Eddie Schaffer age 33 and his two children, 12-year-old Esther and 9-year-old Peter live in a small apartment upstairs from their landlord, Jacob Mendel. A year prior, Eddie's wife Rachel was killed together with his landlord's wife, Miriam. Eddie is having difficulty coping with Rachel's death and decides to enlist in the army throwing the entire family for a loop. The children had already lost their mother and feared losing their father in battle.

Eddie's mother, Grandma Shaffer, lives next door to the Goodrich family who has a daughter Penny, aged 24. Penny's parents are older, quite strict and have sheltered Penny her entire life, always telling her she had no more sense than a green bean. As a result poor Penny suffers from terrible fear of being on her own and afraid of the world at large, although she holds a job as a ticket agent at the local bus station. Unbeknownst to Eddie, Penny has had a crush on him for years and years and always wished Eddie had married her instead of Rachel. She cried her eyes out when she learned Eddie was getting married.

Now enlisted in the Army and ready to head off for basic training, Eddie needs someone to care for young Esther and Peter. His own mother, Grandma Shaffer is adamant that there is no way possible she can look after two young children and is completely dead set against Eddie enlisting but Eddie had already enlisted sending Grandma into quite a dramatic tizzy. Penny steps forward and offers to care for the children herself with her underlying motive being that Eddie will fall in love with her and marry HER this time.

Soon Penny and children are ensconced in Eddie's apartment, living above Jacob Mendel who is suffering with his own problems. His son, Avraham traveled to Hungary five years ago to study the Torah, met and married Sarah and they had a daughter together whom they named Fredeleh, but now all three of them are missing!

Young Esther is struggling in Sunday school asking the teacher why there are wars, why her mother died in the car accident and asks: "Why doesn't God just kill all the evil people himself". Her teacher tells the class they should pray for their loved ones who are off fighting in the war but Esther can't accept that as an answer and inquires: "Even if we pray and pray, God doesn't stop people from dying, so what good does it do"? How many of us have asked that very same question during our own journey of faith?

In the meantime, poor little Peter seems to have lost his ability to talk once his father went off to war and is frightened. He writes a note on his chalkboard for his sister saying: "I don't know what's wrong. I try to talk and nothing comes out. Help me!" Esther doesn't know what to do and won't ask Penny for any help as she despises Penny and thinks that she is trying to replace her mother. But Penny, at this point, couldn't be much help as she herself has no self-confidence, always telling herself she can't do things and always makes a mess of everything. These put-downs are old tapes playing in her head that her parents have pounded into her since she was a young child. They continue to treat Penny as a child and make her feel as though everything that happens is her fault. Yet somehow she found the inner strength and courage to move out of her parents home and care for Eddie's children.

Downstairs, Jacob Mendel has lost his Jewish faith completely. Esther and Peter visit Mr. Mendel after school each day to help him around the house. Esther begins to seek answers about God, prayer and faith from Mr. Mendel but he doesn't know how to help Esther or what to say to her. He too has lost faith in his religion and his God. He finally explains the story of Joseph and the coat of many colours and tells the children that: "Faith is believing even when you cannot see it". But, does Jacob himself still really believe that?

Due to Esther's persistence and questions, and Peter's sad eyes, Jacob was beginning to come out from under the veil of darkness and unbelief he had been under for the past year and a half. Jacob decides that he and the children will invite Penny in celebrating "Purim", which is the feast of "Queen Esther" from the Bible. Keeping with tradition, Jacob tells the children that instead of him telling the story, they will each read the story together with everyone taking a part. Of course, Esther will play the part of Queen Esther and Peter will be Hashem (The Man or God). They will also bake the traditional "Hamantaschen" (cookies). During Jacob's planning of the party he realizes he is truly happy.

As the relationship between Mr. Mendel, the children and Penny begins to grow, they come to learn together about faith, loss, love, and forgiveness. There are so many other exciting parts in this story that I don't want to give anything else away. But there are a few morals in this story that I believe are important for all of us to remember.

We need to remember that God is always there, even when we can't see Him or hear Him. Even when we think our prayers are not being heard, they are, just not always in the way we'd like them to be. It is and has always been God's will that shall be done, not ours! Even during silence and painful hardships, God is still there. Sometimes we must travel through hardships in our lives in order for us to learn something or to understand something. Without hardships we wouldn't be able to grow in our faith. We need to trust God and live our lives as humble servants, even when we cannot see, even when we feel tired of looking and want to give up. God is ALWAYS there, even when He is silent.

This is also an important story that talks about the atrocities that were placed upon the people of Jewish faith during the war, in my opinion, one of the saddest and most hurtful of all times in history.

Lynn Austin has once again written a riveting story. A story that you'll remember long after the last page has been turned. It's the type of book you'll want to read again and again. This is one story you can't miss!!

Lynn Austin is one of my favorite authors. With that being said I felt it took way to long to get to the conclusion or the end. I felt that by taking so long to get to the end the ending itself was rushed. I would have like to have learned more about Mr. Mendels son and his wife and their story in capitivity. The story weaves many tales together and is well written it just doesn't have that passion that some of the other books have had. It is a well written novel just a little to long and tied up to neatly at the end.

I love Lynn Austin, so I had high hopes for this book. Though I don't think it was quite as good as some of her other books (Refiner's Fire series), I did enjoy it. I love that the "Far Apart" theme was carried out in many ways through the various characters and the fact that Mr. Mendel kept reinforcing the idea that we should stop at nothing to find those we love.

The author did a good job developing the characters. I genuinely cared about what happened to them and felt the anguish of Esther as she desperately searched the news for information about the area her father was. Mr. Mendel was probably my favorite character. I felt his heartache throughout the book and loved how he grew as a person throughout the story.

Over the weekend, I described Lynn Austin's recent book, While We're Far Apart, like an intricate symphony. It begins with a rather straightforward melody: Penny watches as the man she pines for leaves for War on the eve of the American involvement in WWII and offers recklessly to take care of his two motherless children in hopes of securing his love upon his return from duty.

Shaking feelings of worthlessness long instilled from her over-bearing parents, Penny steps outside the front door of the house she has always lived in and charges toward a new future.

On the eve of his departure, widowed Eddie tries to ignore the pleas of his two young children begging him to stay. They don't want Penny to move into their Brooklyn Apartment and usurp their dead mother's space. They, instead, want their father to stay home from the war.

Eddie leaves to converse with Jacob Mendel, his Jewish landlord and another tune strings in.

Jacob's wife Miriam and Eddie's wife Rachel were both killed in the same untimely accident. As ramification, Jacob has lost his faith in Hashem ---- God seems so far away although the rabbi and his wife try desperately to tug the former elder back to the life of the synagogue.

And then, climactically and with discordance, the local synagogue is prey to an act of arson and a seemingly faraway hatred is brandished like a cymbal- jolt into the present.

The tune evokes a haunting change as more instruments are melded into each deft cadence and more bars are added to prolong the unraveling symphony. Dense orchestration including the introduction of new friends; wisps of letters from Jacob's son and his wife in war-torn, Holocaust Hungary, and deep whispers of secrets from loved ones near and far merge to create a seamless piece.

There are themes of love and pursuit; of anger, of hatred of a clashing war. Of the brisk touch of this world and the world beyond. It is an almost perfect rendering of a tumultuous time.

Austin never writes without an over-arching theme and in While We're Far Apart, the seeming absence of God is most resonant.

Jacob followed and meditated on the words of the Torah steadfastly only to find the seams of his world tearing and his life falling apart.

Penny isn't sure how to believe in God: when she repeats over and over again all of her shortcomings.

Young Esther and her wordless brother Peter go through the motions of a Sunday Schooled upbringing attempting to reconcile the death of their mother with the faith she seemed to inspire in them.

All lives collide and cross--- and yet the Almighty seems painfully silent.

While We're Far Apart is a magnificent exposition of God in all of his seeming silences. Is He there when we can't hear Him? ---There whether in the materialization of Christian or Jewish tradition? Even amidst a Holocaust recalling the treacherous reign of Haman and the unlikely heroism of Queen Esther? Amidst persecution, death and unwarranted vandalism?

How can we pick up the pieces of our faith if we're not sure where faith leads?

What is God doing behind the scenes and how are His silences even more telling than His revelation?

The end of the song, the end of the book, empowers the reader to think of God in a personal and enraptured way. He can handle our anger and our despair: our lashings out and our pain..... for it is in these moments that we test our faith to breaking point, shirk any complacency and recognize that years later, when the glass is undimmed, that He was there working out the technical aspects, the last strains and chords of melody and sewing together a music so beautiful our human ears could scarce imagine it.

I have been downloading only free Kindle books as I want to take my time to really build a library. I just finished reading "While we're Far Apart" and I am so happy I picked this one. I don't think it would have ever found it's way into my hands otherwise. It is beautifully written. Tells a wonderful story of different people, from different families and faiths, who come together while WW2 rages. I started it yesterday, wanting to savor it, but throughout today, I kept putting it down and picking it right back up again. I don't feel, as one reviewer suggested, that it was like a history lesson. I learned a couple things I did not know, but everything blended into a beautiful story of finding love, lost love and new love. I am not the best writer as far as reviewing, but I highly recommend this book as a touching read. I will be looking for more of Lynn Austins books. I will most definitely pick up this book and read it again and again. It is staying on my Kindle.

One of the best free books I've read on my Kindle so far. It starts out a little slow but about a quarter into it I just had to know what was going to happen. The telling of the horrific things that happened under Hitler's insanity can sometimes get too overwhelming, especially in fiction. This book did a great job of tugging at your heart so we don't ever forget, and at the same time providing an entertaining story about families from two different religions but that are essentially the same. I really recommend this for early teens too since it's not too graphic and there is no obscene language or sexual content. There is one reference to a sex crime but that's why I'd keep the reading age to about 13 minimum.

We have all heard of the atrocities of WWII - most especially the Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews. This is a lovely story, told from the point of view of family in New York, of the impact of war - the absence of parents, the worry for family far away and beyond direct help, the disruptions of the normal order of society by the mobilization of almost all men between 20 and 40 years of age. Very much enjoyed, a few tears, definitely recommend.