A Father's Love

About the Book

A Father's Love is an autobiographical novel about childhood suffering and endurance. The story opens in 1951, when Leah, age six, a child of Holocaust survivors, arrives with her family in New York from Displaced Person's Camps in Germany. What follows is a classic tale of immigrant struggle and success, as well as its antithesis: family dysfunction and child sexual abuse. Unable to comprehend or process her father's molestation and nighttime sexual attacks, Leah becomes increasingly fearful and dissociated. She begins to live a dual existence. At school she learns English, excels in her studies and adapts to her American environment. At home, where the traumas and losses of war remain her parents' daily reality, life is chaotic and sometimes violent. While Leah absorbs her family's suffering, she must also silently cope with the mysterious assaults of an "unknown" assailant. As she strives for insight and comprehension, she begins to view her parents with a dispassionate eye, and is thus well on her way to forging her own identity.

About the Author

Luisa Smith was born in Siberia Russia in 1944, where her Jewish parents survived Nazi persecution. They arrived in New York in 1951, where the author grew up and earned her B.A., and M.A. degrees in English Literature at Queens College. She taught High School English in New York City for 23 years, and is currently living with her husband at Lake Tahoe.