Overview

Beautiful and spirited Daniela dreams of becoming a doctor while growing up in Yedinitz, Romania in 1940, but as a Jew, she is barred from higher education. Her mother, who is the dressmaker to a local countess, hires her a tutor, the rebellious and precocious Mihail. The two soon begin a passionate romance, unable to resist the powerful love and attraction they share. When the Nazis invade Romania, Daniela and Mihail's lives are forever changed: Mihail escapes and joins the partisans; Daniela is captured and sent on the notorious Transnistrian Death March, where Jews are starved, murdered, and robbed. Daniela is brutally raped by Romanian soldiers, and trapped by their depravity, she watches helplessly as her people are destroyed. Daniela's life is spared when her beauty catches the eye of a Romanian Iron Guard commander, Major Dragulescu, who forcibly takes her as his concubine and also sends her to nurse Romanian soldiers in the field hospital, where Daniela cannot help feeling pity at the suffering that surrounds her. One night Mihail appears with a troop of partisans on a mission to assassinate two key Nazis visiting the major. What happens next is both heroic and tragic, and results in Daniela's escape with the partisans, who train her in sabotage and battle tactics. She throws herself into living on the run behind enemy lines, and transforms herself into an effective soldier and partisan leader until the war mercifully comes to an end. The Dressmaker's Daughter is an unflinching look at the horrors inflicted by the Nazis upon the Romanian Jews during the Holocaust, and one brave young woman's ability to rise above her suffering and escape to freedom.

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9781595801074

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Reviews

Far from a 'happily ever after' story, the novel delves into the impact that the abuse had on Daniela. While she feels herself defiled and degraded by her rapists, and imagines herself unworthy of ever being loved again, the Jewish partisans try to convince her otherwise. What was important, they told her, was that she survived. Only her former captors bear blame and the shame, not her. However accepting they are, that does not prevent Daniela from suffering from what today we recognize as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Her tortured dreams are lurid. The world today knows how dramatically soldiers suffer from their memories of battle and the unspeakable agony and bloodshed they saw all around them. The world also needs to recognize that sexually brutalized women also are irreparably traumatized. -San Diego Jewish World

Far from a 'happily ever after' story, the novel delves into the impact that the abuse had on Daniela. While she feels herself defiled and degraded by her rapists, and imagines herself unworthy of ever being loved again, the Jewish partisans try to convince her otherwise. What was important, they told her, was that she survived. Only her former captors bear blame and the shame, not her. However accepting they are, that does not prevent Daniela from suffering from what today we recognize as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Her tortured dreams are lurid. The world today knows how dramatically soldiers suffer from their memories of battle and the unspeakable agony and bloodshed they saw all around them. The world also needs to recognize that sexually brutalized women also are irreparably traumatized. -San Diego Jewish World The historical relevance to current events makes it worthwhile reading for those interested in learning more about Romania during WWII. -Historical Novel Society

Author Information

Linda Boroff’s writing appears in McSweeney’s, All the Sins, The Write Launch, Parhelion, Close to the Bone, Crack the Spine, Writing Disorder, The Piltdown Review, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Eclectica, 5:21 Magazine, Thoughtful Dog, The Satirist, Fleas on the Dog, Hollywood Dementia, Sundress, In Posse Review, Adelaide Magazine, Word Riot, Ducts, Blunderbuss, Storyglossia, The Furious Gazelle, The Pedestal Magazine, Eyeshot, JONAH Magazine, The Boiler, Bound Off, Black Denim Lit, Stirring, Drunk Monkeys, and Fictive Dream. Linda’s suspense novella, The Remnant, was published in June 2020. A collection of linked short stories, All I Can Take of You, was published in August 2020 by Adelaide Press. Her latest novel, Twisted Fate, is coming in 2022 from Champagne Book Group. She was nominated in 2021 and 2016 for a Pushcart Prize in fiction. A short story is currently under option to director Brad Furman and Sony. Linda Boroff also wrote the feature film, Murder in Fashion. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English and currently lives and works in Silicon Valley.

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