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My Dear Boy
- Author
- Joanie Holzer Schirm
- Narrator
- Kate Mulligan, Traber Burns
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 1 March 2019
- Run Time
- 11 hours 46 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
After the death of Joanie Holzer Schirm’s parents in 2000, she found hundreds of letters, held together by rusted paperclips and stamped with censor marks, sent from Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, China, and South and North America, along with journals, vintage film, taped interviews, and photographs. In working through these various materials documenting the life of her father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, she learned of her family history through his remarkable experiences of exile and loss, resilience and hope.
In this posthumous memoir, Schirm elegantly re-creates her father’s youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China’s war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from the humorous to the menacing, Holzer’s life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist—a book that will move readers for generations to come.
Critics Review
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“Educators will find no better book than My Dear Boy to provide the sweeping context of pre– and World War II multicontinental events.”
William “Bill” Younglove, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow
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“Funny, sad, poignant, insightful, and spiritual, My Dear Boy is simply captivating and lovingly told.”
P. R. Pinard, PhD, American historian
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“This stunning tribute to Schirm’s father’s legacy of service reminds us that our examination of the human heart as individual characters should lead us to protect the dignity of all others, no matter the friction of our differences.
Buddy Dyer, mayor of Orlando
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Joanie Holzer Schirm
- Narrator
- Kate Mulligan, Traber Burns
- Duration
- 11 hours 46 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 March 2019
- ISBN
- 9781982631550
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Biography: historical, political and military, Memoirs, Biography: historical, political and military, True war and combat stories
Synopsis
After the death of Joanie Holzer Schirm’s parents in 2000, she found hundreds of letters, held together by rusted paperclips and stamped with censor marks, sent from Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, China, and South and North America, along with journals, vintage film, taped interviews, and photographs. In working through these various materials documenting the life of her father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, she learned of her family history through his remarkable experiences of exile and loss, resilience and hope.In this posthumous memoir, Schirm elegantly re-creates her father’s youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China’s war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from the humorous to the menacing, Holzer’s life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist—a book that will move readers for generations to come.
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