KAMII Women's Group November Book Salon
Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30 PM
Someday We will Fly
By Rachel DeWoskin

Someday We will Fly: A heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge. The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn’t understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?

About the Author
Rachel DeWoskin spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera.  Rachel and her family spent six summers in Shanghai while she researched Someday We Will Fly.
Professor DeWoskin will recount the research process for her novel, Someday We Will Fly. She took a historical event related to the Holocaust – the small population of Eastern European Jews who found sanctuary in China during the war-and created a fictional world filled with characters who lives and experiences were based on those actual individuals.
Rachel is on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she teaches creative writing.

Co-Presenter Jacqueline Pardo
Jacqueline Pardo is a long time KAM Isaiah Israel member whose mother fled Germany with her family in 1939, when she was 7, and spent the war years in Shanghai.  She preserved many artifacts from her experience growing up in the German Jewish refugee community in Shanghai.  Jacqueline will speak about her mother’s experience.
Dr Pardo is a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago, where she has practiced at the University’s Student Counseling Service for over 20 years.