Where Butterflies Go by Debra Doxer

Hello, Sunshines, I have the massive pleasure to be today’s stop on this incredible blog tour for; Where Butterflies Go by Debra Doxer. I am super excited to be sharing my review of this powerful book, this is one of those rare jewels which will stay with you for a long, long time and I hope you all will grab yourselves a copy too. Firstly, I want to say thank you to Amy at HFVBT for the invite the blog tour.

Publication Date: October 7, 2020

Format: Paperback & eBook; 270 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Meira Sokolow had the misfortune of being born to Jewish parents in Warsaw, Poland, in 1912. Before she took her first breath, her fate had been sealed.

Residing in the Jewish Quarter of the city, Meira’s early life was typical. She fell in love with a local boy, got married, and had a daughter. Then the German army marched into Warsaw and everything changed. Forced into the ghetto with her family, she found survival to be a daily struggle.

Hunger, disease, and unimaginable cruelty were her stark realities. When the ghetto was purged and she was sent to a concentration camp, Meira still had her family, and that was all that mattered. Then the camp was liquidated, and only a handful of survivors remained out of thousands.

Meira Sokolow was one of them. No longer a wife or mother, Meira emigrated to New York City. After World War II, the world wanted to move on and start a new chapter, but Meira couldn’t turn the page so easily. She walked through her days alone, like a ghost with nothing to tether her to the earth. Then she met Max, a handsome American, who first mistook her for one of the boring socialites he encountered every day. He soon learned she was unlike anyone he had met before, seeing her strength and resilience, even when she couldn’t. Max knew he could breathe life into her again, if only she would let him.

Tragic and heartfelt, Where Butterflies Go is based on the harrowing true story of one woman’s survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and her struggle to find meaning in the aftermath.

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Review

I am completely lost for words, I could use various platitudes such as ‘wow, stunning, breath-taking but to be perfectly honest there are no words that can fully do this gorgeous book justice. Nothing I can string together in form of a review will do justice to just how incredible and moving this book is, it feels wrong pinning a few overly used words to this beautiful book, this is incredibly special and a stunning tribute to those who were taken so brutally and a powerful testament to those who survived to share their stories with us all.

Where Butterflies Go is a historical fiction based on the true story of the author; Debra Doxer’s family history, of her great aunt. I want to say a huge thank you to Debra for sharing such a personal and powerful story with us all.

The book is split, the first part tells the story of Meira who is currently living with her family in the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, Poland, the animosity towards the Jewish community is palpable, there is a feeling of unease as anti-Semitism grows. But Meira and her family just go about their lives day after day. Years later the German army arrived in Poland, Meira is now a mother and happily married and they now face the unthinkable, their own country’s government looks the other way as the Jewish community is brutally forced to leave everything they have, taken from their homes and jobs and dumped in the middle of the rat-infested, decease ridden ghetto.

Meira is a strong and determined woman she keeps her head down gets on with the job assigned to her and hopes for the light at the end of this dark and perilous tunnel, but that tunnel is about to longer and darker as Meira soon finds her self with thousands, upon thousands more in the nightmare that is the camps, good and innocent people being brutally murdered. Incredibly Meira survives and the second part of the story starts as Meira manages to make her way to America, where she not only finds her long-lost sister, and there is a blossoming of love on the horizon for her. But with everything Meira has had to endure over the years, what she had seen and done, her experiences have taken a toll on her, can she really be able to trust and move forward to grab the happiness which she deserves?

Where Butterflies Go is a once-in-a-lifetime book which everyone must read, it isn’t the easiest of reads at times, it’s emotional and haunting and will break the hardest of hearts, and there is hope and love and the pure unrelenting determination to survive. It will leave you feeling very emotional, I know that Meira and her family will stay with me for a long time.

I have read a lot of historical fiction, especially surrounding the Holocaust, and this is easily one of the most inspiring and powerful. These harrowing stories of hardship, of horror, of survival, NEED to be told, they need to be shared only by knowing the grim reality of what happened all those years ago can we learn and make sure that such atrocities never happen ever again.

There is not much more I can say, this book is just stunning!

About the Author

Debra Doxer was born in Boston, and other than a few lost years in the California sunshine, she has always resided in the Boston area. She writes fiction, technical software documents, illegible scribbles on sticky notes, and texts that get mangled by AutoCorrect. She writes for a living, and she writes for fun. When not writing, she’s walking her Havanese puppy and forcing her daughter to listen to new wave 80s music.”