The Lost by Daniel Mendlesohn

The Lost begins as the story of a boy , Daniel Mendlesohn,who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust—a subject that captured his imagination from childhood. Decades later, motivated by the discovery of letters written to his grandfather in 1939 by this lost great-uncle, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. This journey eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents, and forces him to confront the discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the answer to the mystery is found.Moving between past and present, inter-weaving his world wide journey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history Daniel Mendlesohn has written a masterpiece! At times suspenseful this deeply personal story is always poignant. I felt immediately inspired to do some genealogy and document some of my own families stories. This was really inspiring and beautiful.