Long Island resident and author Alyson Richman will speak about and sign her new book, "The Lost Wife," at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15.
Josef Kohn is a successful New York obstetrician who still dreams of his first wife, Lenka, an art student he left behind in Czechoslovakia while fleeing the Nazis. Lenka, who he believes died during the war, continues to haunt his dreams, while his second wife, Amalia, remains more of a ghost to him than is Lenka.
As we follow Lenka's journey to the ghetto of Terezin, where she is forced to draft technical drawings for the Germans and is a witness to the secret paintings of an underground group of artists involved in their own form of resistance against their captors, we see not only the endurance of the human spirit, but also of the artist, whose desire to create and document, cannot be extinguished.
From the glamourous ease of pre-War Prague, to the ensuing horror of Nazi Europe, we witness both the dawning of Lenka's and Josef's love affair to its tragic unravelling.
Richman is the author of: "The Mask Carver's Son," "Swedish Tango," and "The Last Van Gogh."
As of next year, her novels will be published in more than 10 languages. Her books have received both national and international critical acclaim, having been reviewed favorably in The New York Times Book Review and other national print outlets. "The Last Van Gogh" was nominated as a Book Sense Notable Pick in 2006. She has appeared on both national television and radio syndicates promoting her work.
A graduate of Wellesley College and a former Thomas J. Watson Fellow, she currently lives with her husband and children in Long Island, New York. Her fourth novel will be published in September 2011.
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