Reviews

What critics are saying about Divine Corners.

  • “Divine Corners beautifully situates the author’s childhood on her Holocaust survivor parents’ farm and in the surrounding local culture. Interwoven with her deeply reflective family history and her later life’s work, she touches deep emotional currents of remembrance and love.”

    —Phil Brown, President, The Catskills Institute 

  • “Divine Corners is a luminous, unflinching memoir of growing up in the shadow—and the strange grace—of her parents’ Holocaust survival. With the insight of a psychiatrist and the heart of a storyteller, she shows how trauma echoes across generations. Wise, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming, this book reminds us that even in the hardest corners of our lives, holiness and healing can still be found.”

    —Angela Buchdahl, Senior Rabbi, Central Synagogue, NYC

  • “Michelle Friedman has vividly illuminated a little-known Jewish subculture –the world of the scrappy Holocaust survivors who farmed chickens and plucked their eggs in remote places. The memoir is shot through with deft and moving psychological insights into how the Holocaust continues to resonate through the lives of the survivors and their children.”

    —Joseph Berger, Veteran, New York Times reporter and author of “Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust”

  • “Michelle Friedman shows how memories of trauma persist through generations, as she courageously recalls them, both through her chosen profession as a psychiatrist, and by exploring her family’s Holocaust experiences. She shows that allowing ourselves to clearly recall such trauma can free us to respond in constructive ways.”

    —Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion Princeton University

  • “Divine Corners cuts no corners as a moving and at times heart-stopping memoir of Michelle Friedman’s family's halting efforts at renewal after the Holocaust. A psychiatrist by training, she places her family's story on the couch in a superego orgy of inherited trauma and personal resilience. Well written and marvelously observed, it is both a devastating portrait and an adventurous travelogue.”

    Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke and Elijah Visible 

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