Author Pearl Good­man presents a first-hand account of life with her par­ents — two peo­ple trau­ma­tized by the Holo­caust. With no resources to under­stand how their dev­as­tat­ing expe­ri­ences may have trans­lat­ed into their behav­iour and their child-rear­ing prac­tices, they attempt­ed to rebuild their shat­tered lives in Cana­da with a new lan­guage and a stone’s throw from the feel­ing of being unwant­ed in the Anglo Toron­to of the late 50s and 60s. Ms. Good­man chron­i­cles their sto­ries and at the same time tell the sto­ry of the impact of their trau­ma upon her and her broth­er as she search­es for her own iden­ti­ty. The Holo­caust is not her expe­ri­ence and yet she embod­ies a feel­ing of dread she can’t explain as a child. She jux­ta­pos­es this back­drop with a light-heart­ed look at sib­ling rival­ry, at life in Toron­to, at the 60s, and par­tic­u­lar­ly at how she was influ­enced by the images, ads and char­ac­ters on Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. ​“a pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing book that deals with the lin­ger­ing inter­gen­er­a­tional effects of the hor­rif­ic his­to­ry of the holocaust..”