Becoming Sarah: A Novel
For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.

Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?

Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.

Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.
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Becoming Sarah: A Novel
For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.

Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?

Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.

Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.
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Becoming Sarah: A Novel

Becoming Sarah: A Novel

by Diane Botnick
Becoming Sarah: A Novel

Becoming Sarah: A Novel

by Diane Botnick

Paperback

$17.99 
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Overview

For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.

Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?

Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.

Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9798896360001
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication date: 10/28/2025
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Diane Botnick was born and raised in the Midwest. She called New York City home for years, writing while working for various organizations in support of the arts. Becoming Sarah is her debut novel. She and her family currently live in Cold Spring, New York.
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