ALSO HERE
A memoir on love, literacy, and the legacy of the Holocaust
As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate.
But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.”
What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman's harrowing survival, and another's struggle to excavate the story from under the sands of time, and her grandma's illiteracy. Chronicling the darkness of the past and the difficult (and occasionally comic) challenges of bringing it to life in a sunny Florida condo, this book offers an insightful look into the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and the impossible pull of both silence and remembrance.
Also Here is forthcoming from Tortoise Books on December 10, 2024. Sign up here for updates.
Advanced Praise
“An artfully composed and poignant intergenerational memoir, Also Here explores the remarkable tenacity of Brooke Randel's grandmother, Golda Indig—who not only survived Auschwitz but also endured the Holocaust's lasting and complicated aftermath. This inspiring book will help readers understand the reasons that such stories need to be told and retold, both for the sake of the teller and the listeners alike.”
—Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe and Third Ear
Brooke Randel has composed a poignant and compelling memoir that lovingly builds witnesses to the traumatic Holocaust childhood experience of her grandmother, Golda Indig. By revealing the challenges of memory, illiteracy, and the fragile connection through generations, Also Here parallels the very struggles of so many who endured this complicated and abhorrent piece of our history.
—Linda Kass, author of Tasa’s Song and A Ritchie Boy, and founding owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookseller in Columbus, Ohio
“Also Here bears witness to the Holocaust and the third generation's efforts to understand it in remarkably important ways.”
—Elizabeth Rynecki, author and documentary filmmaker of Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy
“In Also Here, Brooke Randel has done what many of us children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors seek to do: capture fading memories, reconstruct precious histories and document essential truths before they vanish forever. Randel has done so wisely, sensitively, poetically and honestly—a welcome achievement.”
—Howard Reich, Emmy-winning author of The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel and Prisoner of Her Past: A Son’s Memoir
An emotionally resonant and compelling debut.
—Eleanor J. Bader for New Pages
Some Essays in the Meantime
“My grandma’s hair is well-coiffed, curls airy and stiff. She stands at five feet tall, but she doesn’t stand long.”
On Writing My Grandma’s Story & Reading It Back to Her in The Nasiona
“My sight changed when I listened and when I listened closely enough, there was a factory in my grandma’s living room.”
The Search for My Grandma's Fourteenth Summer in Hypertext Magazine
“I can’t speak the five other languages she knows, but maybe if I slow down enough in this one, if I sit still, if I listen to what she is so clearly trying to express, I will know something.”
Offers My Grandma Has Made Me in Pithead Chapel
“Would the museum trigger suppressed memories for her? Would she break down? Would we?”
Taking the Holocaust Survivor to the Holocaust Museum on Medium
