Good for a Single Journey is the novelization of a true story: that of the author’s family. From her great-grandparents down the years to her own presence, Helen Joyce weaves an intriguing tapestry. Their story begins as World War I is ending when her great-grandparents fled Galicia to escape the Russian pogroms, winding up in Vienna. All is peaceful for a time, but their children don’t want to follow in their old ways, strictly following Orthodox Jewish rules. But after much anger and compromise on both sides, a new way of living is hammered out. The 1930s sees the rise of Hitler and fascism, and once again the family is torn between those who don’t want to leave their homes – not even to move to Israel – and those of their children, who desperately urge them to emigrate. This section is particularly compelling; I kept wanting to scream at the characters, “Get out of Hitler’s path and go to Israel!” Some of the family survives World War II; some do not. Then we follow the family as they settle into a new life in the new state of Israel. And as the family continues to adjust to yet another new land, and continues to grow… Good for a Single Journey is a fascinating, compelling saga of a real-life family. None of them are notable save to their family, but in the skilled pen of Helen Joyce, they become notable to the reader. This is a story of faith and hope, of despair and loss. I heartily recommend this book!

Good for a Single Journey is wonderful. It’s an evocative, character-rich, historically accurate snapshot of a period of dramatic upheaval. Above all, it’s a moving story that’s hard to put down.

Helen Joyce tells the extraordinary story of her family’s journey starting with her great grandparents in early 20th-century Poland. She follows four generations in Europe and Palestine weaving together their experiences through two world wars and the early years of the State of Israel. The book takes the reader on an emotional rollercoaster through some of the worst atrocities known to man. The book culminates in Israel, where some family members, having survived the Shoah struggle to rebuild shattered lives.

Helen Joyce, in her remarkable and moving book, Good for a Single Journey, takes us on a personal and historical voyage. Her book not only adds to the significant oeuvre written on the Holocaust, it defines the essence of survival and hope which helped pave the way to the creation of the modern State of Israel. I could not put it down!

The title of Helen Joyce’s Good for a Single Journey is lifted from the visa her mother obtained from British Passport Control in Prague just a month before the start of World War II. It would be wrong to assume that her book is therefore simply an account of the impact of that war on her family.  Its scope is far wider and its nature more ambitious. In an intriguing mix of fact and fiction, Helen Joyce uses her real-life family histories, going back to her great grandparents, as the basis of her semi-history, semi-novel that traces the traumatic impact of the politics of the twentieth century on a Jewish family. Written with compassion and understanding, her story is both moving and absorbing. Starting in Galicia just after the start of the World War I and ending in Israel in 1962, it will resonate with many families whose experiences also encompassed those momentous years.