Lost in America

I enjoyed reading LOST IN AMERICA by Marilyn Sachs, but found it rather disappointing when compared to some of the other books I have read on the Holocaust and its aftermath. LOST IN AMERICA tells the story of Nicole, a French Jewish teenager, and the hardships she faced during World War II particularly when her mother, father, and younger sister were taken away to a concentration camp on the night she happened to be staying over at a friend's house. Never given the chance to say goodbye, Nicole mourns for the family she lost and feels guilty that she survived. Life in France was hard during the war, particularly for a young Jewish girl who was trying to keep a low profile to avoid the eyes of the Nazi soldiers, but Nicole manages to make friends and cope with the hardships she'd been dealt. After the war, Nicole immigrated to America, but her life's problems were not eased. Her family (father's cousin) doesn't want her. She makes their apartment seem even more cramped. Her cousin's wife is especially grumpy and demands Nicole find a job and give the majority of her paycheck to her. In one scene after Nicole's lost one job, Harriet the cousin demands that she goes out in a snowstorm to begin looking for work-her attitude take galoshes and an umbrella, but go now. The book focuses on her often-strained relations with her extended family, her confusion with American culture and language, her first dating experiences, and her first working experiences. Essentially, Nicole feels like a displaced person without a home of her own. I have several issues with the book, however. First, the book flaps with its excerpted material draws a very different picture of the book than the book that actually is. The quote from the book (which seems random to me) is when one of her coworkers, Anne-Marie, tries to teach Nicole to smoke so she can be "cool" like a real American. Yes, the quote shows Nicole's awkwardness with what people expect "an American girl" to be...but really I think another quote would have sufficed. The quote makes it appear as if the book is lighthearted and funny and for the most part it's not-and that's a good thing in my opinion. Nicole's depth of character shows how most "American girls" were too shallow to care about the important things in life. However, my real issue with the book is that it seems to start and stop abruptly. There doesn't seem to be much of a thread of a plot throughout the book. So after she's in America, the chapters are episodic. A chapter on shopping. A chapter on learning to type. A chapter on dating. But there isn't much of a plot over all. So it's hard to have an actual ending. It does have an ending. She sums it up by saying, after a year I feel like America could really be my home. It's an adequate ending, I suppose, but left me wanting something more. Typically, I like Holocaust (and Holocaust-related) literature. I have read many books both adult and young-adult (even some picture books) but this t

Set just after World War II, Lost In America is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who has come to America from France. She likes ordinary pleasures such as banana splits, eating chocolate, her warm red coat, and a boyfriend she met on a double date. But her aunt pressures her to take up smoking to become a "real American girl", and making a new life for herself in a strange land offers greater challenges every turn., and memories of losing her family to the murderous campaign of the Nazis haunt her. A moving story about coming of age from Marilyn Sachs, author of more than thirty-five award-winning books and coeditor of the acclaimed "The Big Book for Peace".