Twenty-four-year-old Julian has just lost his job, his roommate, and his New York apartment. He runs back to his parents, expecting them to bail him out, but they don’t. They are tired of his expectation of privilege. So, he sets across the country to stay for a while with his 94-year-old grandmother, Salomea Künstler, who is recovering from a broken wrist.
Salomea Künstler was just 11-years-old when she fled with her parents and grandfather from Vienna at the start of World War II in 1939. Although very young at the time, she was just old enough to know of the horrors of the Holocaust. While not religious Jews, they were Jews none-the-less, and barely escaped with their lives. Much of her family perished. She came from a family of musicians, and Los Angeles and Hollywood seemed a logical place for the family to land.
Salomea Künstler, known to friends as Mamie, still lives in the family bungalow along the beach in Venice, California. Just as Julian arrives and begins interviewing for jobs, the world shuts down because of Covid-19. Julian is now stuck with his grandmother and her aging housekeeper, Agatha.
With nothing much to do, Mamie begins to share with Julian the stories of her life. Mamie has wonderful tales of life in Vienna and America with her beloved grandfather. In America, her family also rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars ~ Greta Garbo, Otto Preminger, Thomas Mann …
As Mamie is in the twilight of her life, Julian has yet to come into his own. Being with Mamie and Agatha, however, jolt him into reevaluating what is important to him in the quiet world of the pandemic.
This was a delightful story.
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