The story of the Reesers, a Jewish family who emigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia on the eve of WWII. They fled the Nazis and left behind four valuable oil paintings. It would take years for Mari Reeser, and then her son Karl, to retrieve them.
Rich in historical and cultural detail, this arresting story is a triumph of hope over despair, tenacity over evil.
[Kacer's] approach exemplifies the demands of historical writing, as well as the ability to educate while offering a thoughtful and suspenseful narrative.
Kathy Kacer mixes memoir and fiction to tell the story of one Jewish family’s determination to survive the Holocaust...a riveting saga...a stunning achievement for children's author Kathy Kacer...Kacer skillfully pushes boundaries to provide a hybrid offering, hovering between memoir and fiction, heavily laced with meticulously researched historical data while unfolding a spectacularly gut-wrenching detective yarn, replete with inspiring characters.
In Restitution, author Kathy Kacer tells this true story of a family's quest in compelling detail, the story fleshed out with the Reeser family's pictures and documents.
I was really impressed with Marie Reiser and all that she managed almost by sheer force of will. An inspiring story.
Kathy already has a well deserved reputation as an award-winning writer of Holocaust-themed books for 9 to 14 year-olds. This is her first book for adults, and I hope it will not be her last. She so clearly understands the need to preserve stories such as this so that future generations will never forget what these people and so many others had to endure.
I absolutely loved this book. I thought it was well-told and documents a different aspect of World War II - stolen art.
By examining the relationships between the members of the Reeser family, the often tenuous relationship between the Reesers and the family who hid the paintings during and after the war, and the relationships between the Reesers and those who aided in their escape from Czechoslovakia and in their endeavors to reclaim their property, Kacer grapples with the complexities of two generations’ attempts to come to terms with the past.