Bonnie Suchman
|
Bonnie Suchman is an attorney who has been practicing law for forty years. Using her legal skills, she researched her husband's family's 250-year history in Germany, and published a non-fiction book about the family, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany. Broken Promises was awarded the Bronze Medal in the Non-Fiction - Genealogy category at the 2022 Readers' Favorite International Book Awards. Her husband's family stories were so compelling to the author that she decided to write them as the Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga. The first novel in the saga, Stumbling Stones, was published in May 2024. Stumbling Stones was named a Finalist for the 2024 Hawthorne Prize for Fiction and a Finalist in the Fiction-Women's category for the 2024 Readers' Favorite International Book Awards. What Remains is Hope, the second novel in the saga, will be published in October 2025.
|
Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany
|
Non-Fiction Memoir
My father-in-law came to America as a German Jewish refugee in 1937, but shared little of his German past with his family or the fact that he had family that died in the Holocaust. Broken Promises tells the story of my father-in-law’s family, a family who experienced first-hand the key moments in the history of Germany's Jews and who, as owners of successful scrap metal businesses, played a role in the development of Germany as an industrial power. This book follows the individual family members who were either able to escape Germany after the Nazis came to power (many just before the borders were closed), or were unable to escape and found themselves in the most notorious of ghettos and the most notorious of Nazi death camps. Ultimately, this is a book about a family who was driven to succeed, but was also strongly patriotic, who believed the promises made when the German government provided Jews with the same rights enjoyed by other German citizens, and were repaid for the important contributions they made to Germany by either having all of their property stolen or by being murdered in the Holocaust. 
|
Stumbling Stones
|
Historical Fiction
Alice Heppenheimer, born into a prosperous German Jewish family around the turn of the twentieth century, comes of age at a time of growing opportunities for women. So, when she turns 21 years old, she convinces her strict family to allow her to attend art school, and then pursues a career in women's fashion. Alice prospers in her career and settles into married life, but she could not anticipate a Nazi Germany, where simply being Jewish has become an existential threat. Stumbling Stones is a novel based on the true story of a woman driven to achieve at a time of persecution and hatred, and who is reluctant to leave the only home she has ever known. But as strong and resilient as Alice is, she now faces the ultimate challenge - will she and her husband be able to escape Nazi Germany or have they waited too long to leave? 
|
What Remains is Hope
|
Historical Fiction
Beginning in 1930s Germany and based on their real lives, four cousins as close as siblings—Bettina, Trudi, Gustav, and Gertrud—share the experiences of the young, including first loves, marriages, and children. Bettina, the oldest, struggles to help her parents with their failing business. Trudi dresses in the latest fashions and tries to make everything look beautiful. Gustav is an artist at heart and hopes to one day open a tailoring shop. Gertrud, the youngest, is forced by her parents to keep secrets, but that doesn’t stop her from chasing boys. However, over their seemingly ordinary lives hangs one critical truth—they’re Jewish—putting them increasingly at risk. When World War II breaks out, the four are still in Germany or German-occupied lands, unable or unwilling to leave. How will these cousins avoid the horrors of the Nazi regime, a regime that wants them dead? Will they be able to avoid the deportations and concentration camps that have claimed their fellow Jews? Danger is their constant companion, and it will take hope and more to survive. 
|
