The Memoir of a Child of Holocaust Survivors
Winter Light is about a sequence of serendipitous rescues—an emotional rags-to-riches story spanning decades through the milestones of an unexpectedly fortuitous life. At its core stands a little girl buffeted by huge historical events which she didn’t live through personally but which marked her forever.
A child of Holocaust survivors, Grace was always searching for shelter but knew that her home was the last place where she could find it. She was eager to be out there in the world, but at every turn had to battle the demons which permeated her home – hissing their frightening, grim messages. Montréal offered Grace the chance of a lifetime. She was four years old when she discovered the joie-de-vivre of her French-Canadian neighbors in the working-class east end of her beloved city. As she grew older other serendipitous “rescues” arrived in surprising ways in many different places.
Vivid and lyrical, Winter Light is a deeply moving memoir dedicated to all who are coming from places of trauma. It is about the vast unknown territory of the human heart, where love and hope can rise above everything – in spite of the ghosts that still haunt us.
LAUNCHED: 8 September 2024
Grace Feuerverger was born and raised in her beloved city of Montréal surrounded by a multitude of languages and cultures inside and outside her home. She is professor emerita of education and ethnography at the University of Toronto, and taught courses on language, culture and identity as well as peace education for many years.
Grace was educated at McGill University, the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy, the University of California at Berkeley, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Toronto. She has also been an invited member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO for many years.
Among her many publications are two award-winning books: Oasis of Dreams (about a cooperative Jewish-Palestinian village in Israel) and Teaching, Learning and Other Miracles (about education as a sacred life journey). Although now retired, her heart will always be in the classroom with her students. Grace and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Toronto.
