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

Agate Nesaule (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

Agate was six when she and her family fled their comfortable parsonage in rural Latvia to avoid the Russian advance. First interned in Germany, they were sent to work at an institute in East Germany where they were bombed and then captured after all by brutal Russian Mongolian troops. A witness to rape, torture and executions, Agate and her sister played among the corpses as the family starved, awaiting death. Time and again it was their mother who kept them going, and yet it was one moment in which she lost hope that changes their relationship and haunts Agate. Ultimately the family is admitted to a Displaced Persons Camp in the British Zone. There Agate goes to school once more. It is her mother's wish for her daughters that they be well-educated; that although she was deprived of her chance, that the life of the mind will be theirs. In her spare time Agate reads a battered paperback first volume of Gone With the Wind, in Latvian. Five years later the Nesaules arrive, penniless, in Indianapolis where Agate teaches herself to read English from a library copy of the book. The Latvian community in exile clings together but Agate wins a scholarship to the university, fulfilling her mother's dream. Yet, though she assimilates, part of Agate is still frozen in the past, still overcome with the shame of "not being worth feeding, " and the terror of captivity, never at ease with her mother, always missing the affection they once shared. And she in unable to choose fulfillment over degradation in her private life... until she begins to tell her story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The memoir of a Latvian woman who grew up amid the horrors of WWII.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A woman in amber is one trapped and preserved in her past. Nesaule (literature and women's studies, Univ. of Wisconsin) tells a moving story to promote the reader's understanding and her own healing. As a child in Latvia, she endured the terror and dislocation of World War II at the hands of both Soviets and Germans, lived in a postwar refugee camp, and became an immigrant to the American Midwest, establishing a life there shaped by survivor's guilt and a sense of victimization. Integral to her life are family relationships, especially estrangement from her mother, stemming from the war years and the author's own unhappy marriage. In middle age, Nesaule at last comes to terms with her past, builds a new life, and offers her audience a well-written and insightful memoir. For subject collections and general readers.
Rena Fowler, Humboldt State Univ., Arcata, Cal.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140261907
• ISBN-13: 978-0140261905
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > History > Europe > Latvia
  • #61 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Abuse & Self Defense > Domestic Violence

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A memoir of Latvian suffering and survival., May 2, 1999

By 

Ed Anderson ([e-mail]) (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (Paperback)

"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.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self-honesty begets self-truth, February 28, 1999

By 

Jane E. Cunningham ([e-mail]) (Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (Paperback)

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.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest memoir of suffering makes painful reading, May 30, 2002

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (Paperback)

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.