My Sister's Mother

By Donna Solecka Urbikas,

Book cover of My Sister's Mother: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin's Siberia

Book description

In the 1950s, baby boomer Donna Solecka Urbikas grew up in the American Midwest yearning for a ""normal"" American family. But during World War II, her Polish-born mother and half sister had endured hunger, disease, and desperate escape from slave labor in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked My Sister's Mother as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

My Sister’s Mother is a family memoir set against the backdrop of forced evictions and deportations of Poles to forced labor camps in frozen Siberia. Russia invaded Poland two weeks after Germany did, and the two powers divided Poland between their countries. Soviet communists murdered thousands of Polish citizens, Polish military, and in 1940 deported hundreds of thousands of civilian Poles, in freezing cattle cars, to forced labor camps in Siberia.

Urbikas’ mother and older sister faced impossible circumstances imposed by Stalin’s brutal policies against Poles. The core theme focuses on motherhood, the relationship between a mother and her daughter,…

If you love My Sister's Mother...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like My Sister's Mother?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like My Sister's Mother.

Browse books like My Sister's Mother

Book cover of The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville
Book cover of Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
Book cover of The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,728

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like My Sister's Mother, you might also like...

Book cover of A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

A Long Way from Iowa by Janet Hulstrand,

This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…

Book cover of Brother. Do. You. Love. Me.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. by Manni Coe, Reuben Coe (illustrator),

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. is a true story of brotherly love overcoming all. Reuben, who has Down's syndrome, was trapped in a care home during the pandemic, spiralling deeper into a non-verbal depression. From isolation and in desperation, he sent his older brother Manni a text, "brother. do. you.…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Poland, Siberia, and Russia?

Poland 122 books
Siberia 48 books
Russia 390 books