The Spoon from Minkowitz: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands
Judith Fein, 2014
GlobalAdventure.us
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780988401938
Summary
Obsessed with her grandmother's mysterious village in Russia from the time she was a child, Judith Fein knew only six facts, and her life became a detective story as she tried to track those facts down.
An award-winning travel journalist with an insatiable curiosity, Judith Fein embarks on an “emotional genealogy quest” to connect to her ancestors in The Spoon from Minkowitz: A Bittersweet Roots Journey to Ancestral Lands. Like a latter-day Marco Polo, Judith follows “arrows” of opportunity in her search for the shtetl her Jewish grandmother left behind in what is now Ukraine. Accompanied by photojournalist husband, Paul Ross, whose roots also lie in Minkowitz, Fein not only solves the mystery of where she came from, but strengthens her marriage and her life.
A chronically “rootless” traveler, Judith Fein finds her roots in Minkowitz, and comes to realize how ancestors influence every aspect of our lives and how pain, rage and fear are passed down from generation to generation. Understanding the ancestors is a stepping stone to transformation.
She leaves her grandmother’s homeland with a new goal: to encourage others to dig deep into family roots to find out who they are and where they came from—and take their own “roots journey.” This compelling historical and cultural travel memoir will provoke deep emotions and personal memories of family and ancestors. (From the publisher.)