November 9, 2015
Pick, a bestselling Canadian poet and author, describes being caught between beliefs in this thoughtful memoir. After being raised in a Christian household, she discovers that her father's grandparents fled the Czech Republic at the beginning of WWII, escaping the imminent genocide of their Jewish relatives and friends. Her grandparents landed in Canada and began a new life as converted Christians. The long-kept secret sends Pick into a gut-wrenching search for some truth in a seemingly endless stream of secrets. As a married woman in her 30s, Pick, now suffering from depression, embarks on a personal search by reaching out to her local Jewish community. In her interactions and moments of discovery, she becomes inspired to write a novel (Far to Go), which borrows heavily from her family's story of persecution at the hands of the Third Reich. Now more determined than ever to reclaim her Jewish heritage, she begins her conversion to Judaism, at first underestimating the complexity involved in pursuing such a goal. Pick writes her memoir by combining her fight against deep depression with the tenacious sense of hope she maintains in recovering her true identity as a Jew. She finds that everything she ever believed, and all that she hopes to believe, can be found in family, truth, tradition, and God.