A childhood memoir of the 1930s

 

Let me confess from the outset that the memoir, Letters to my Father, was written by a dear friend, Rina Huber.
     Rina today is 84 years old - light years removed from the cranky street urchin we see on the book cover at left - and at the tail end of a rich and satisfying life.
      She's already penned the lyrical Nine Summers, about nine seasons on a yacht sailing around the Mediterranean with her now deceased husband, a book that garnered consistently positive critical reviews.
     Now the Sydney Jewish Museum is publishing this latest offering from Rina who looks back on a tumultuous childhood.

"Rina's book has been snapped up by Sydney's most discerning book-seller and owner of one of the city's finest book emporia, Lesley Mackay."

 

     Simply told through the eyes of a child, Huber describes living with her family in Palestine in the early 1930s where everyone there set about building a new life from the rocky, dry ground up.
        This was a time when Palestinians and Jews still lived relatively peacefully as neighbours. Money was scarce, everyone lived in cramped dwellings and children played barefoot in dusty, treeless streets, but life was innocent and happy.
      When Rina's mother dies prematurely however, life begins to unravel for seven-year-old Rina who sets sail to Mussolini-led Italy to live with little-known relatives with whom she has no common language.
      It would spoil the reading to reveal anything more, except to say that Letters to my Father has been snapped up by Sydney's most discerning book-seller, Lesley Mackay.
      There Rina's memoir is already selling strongly before its  official launch on April 21, and that comes as no surprise to me.  Buy yourself a copy now! >>>