In Becom­ing Alice, Rene’s fam­i­ly odyssey takes them from Nazi-occu­pied Vien­na, to Riga, Latvia where her often cru­el, dom­i­neer­ing father takes charge and gets his fam­i­ly to Kobe, Japan, and with the help of HIAS (Hebrew Immi­grant Aid Soci­ety) and affi­davits, to Amer­i­ca. They cross the Atlantic on an old Japan­ese freighter and land in Seat­tle. More than the sto­ry of escape from the Nazis, this is a sto­ry of what hap­pens when a man who was used to respect in his field and obei­sance from his fam­i­ly, can­not adjust and finds his role in the fam­i­ly total­ly reversed in Amer­i­ca. His for­mer­ly sub­mis­sive wife, whom he always belit­tled, adjusts well to Amer­i­ca and the Eng­lish lan­guage. With the help of HIAS, she obtains a gro­cery store, learns to run it, and sup­ports her fam­i­ly. There is anoth­er voy­age in this book. It is the author’s jour­ney out from under her father’s dom­i­na­tion and her mother’s old world per­spec­tive, to free­dom for her­self at last, com­plete with a new Amer­i­can name, ​“Alice.”