Klara's Truth

It is May 2014, and Dr. Klara Lieberman—forty-nine, single, professor of archaeology at a small liberal arts college in Maine, a contained person living a contained life—has just received a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, that will dramatically change her life. Her father, she learns—the man who has been absent from her life for the last forty-three years, and about whom she has long been desperate for information—is dead. Has been for many years, in fact, which Bessie clearly knew. But now the Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during WWII, and Bessie wants the money. Klara has little interest in the money—but she does want answers about her father. She flies to Warsaw, determined to learn more.

In Poland, Klara begins to piece together her father’s, and her own, story. She also connects with extended family, begins a romantic relationship, and discovers her calling: repairing the hundreds of forgotten, and mostly destroyed, pre-War Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Along the way, she becomes a more integrated, embodied, and interpersonally connected individual—one with the tools to make peace with her past and, for the first time in her life, build purposefully toward a bigger future.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Susan Weissbach Friedman has written a compelling story of family and heritage and self-discovery, of family ties and friendship and second chances, and has added a side of possible romance. She also gives us another perspective on how the sharp fingernails of war reach through generations and prick the skin decades after the guns stop firing. A great read!" - Ellen Barker

"In her beautifully written and riveting debut novel, Friedman propelled me on a journey to post-WWII Poland where the ghosts of a once vibrant Jewish community haunted me. With great sensitivity, Friedman uses her experience as a social worker and therapist to show how a rejecting mother and hidden childhood sexual trauma froze Klara's heart and left her fearful of close relationships. I rejoiced as Klara gradually finds purpose and love in this engrossing family saga that I could not put down." - Florence Reiss Kraut

"Klara's Truth is an ambitious and heartfelt novel about the ways in which our adult lives are shaped by the secrets of our past. From Maine to New York to modern-day Warsaw, Susan Weissbach brings readers on a journey of self-discovery, newfound family, and acceptance." - Lynda Cohen Loigman