The families of both of my parents fled Latvia and the invading Russians when my parents were young. This book actually is what got my mother and me talking about her childhood in Latvia and in the DP camps, so in that sense, it is a very important book. Everyone I've ever talked to, though, has had the same general opinion of Ms. Nesaule's book -- she exaggerates a bit. She makes things up. She does say this in the introduction: "I have forgotten some things..." This book leaves a good -impression- of what life was like, but it should not be read as Gospel.

Others have argued the authenticity of Ms. Nesaule's account of life in the concentration camps; indeed, the author herself voices her own uncertainty of her story, confessing to much she has forgotten. Still, it is a story worth reading. American born, I've never found myself, or even thought to imagine myself, in a situation where I have feared for my life and the lives of my family.

Ms. Nesaule's account, which she manages to relate with frank detachment, is disturbing. Who among us, in America, can understand how it feels to be kept in a basement, never knowing when it might be our turn to be taken behind the partition to be raped, or taken outside to be lined up to be shot? To be cuffed or threatened for whispering to a sibling?

During her ordeal, the young Agate learns the futility of prayer, that what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger, and that wounds such as those she endured never heal; although by the end of the book, after a failed long-term marriage left her the victim, she finds a semblance of peace.

Despite its obvious flaws-among others, Ms. Nesaule's son Boris is virtually non-existent and her portrayal of her husband Joe is far too one-dimensional... his dialogue is stilted and comprised of only a few phrases, which she uses time and time again (perhaps these are all she recalls after two decades of emotional abuse-A Woman In Amber is a compelling read. Whether more fiction than fact is immaterial. Ms. Nesaule's simple message is this: her suffering, as is the suffering of all men and women since the dawn of civilization, is but a single page in the history of mankind. How sad that man cannot get along with himself, sadder still that he keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and never learns.

Recommended.

"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.