First published 2010
Suzanne Berne knew her father carried deep sadness from losing his mother as a young boy. Now with her father aging and sick, she decides to reconstruct the life of the grandmother she never met. Armed with old photographs and a box of family mementos, Berne pieces together Lucile's story. Her grandmother was born Lucile Kroger, daughter of Bernard Henry Kroger, who built a small grocery business into today's massive retail empire worth $76 billion. Lucile grew up in Cincinnati at the century's turn, attended Wellesley College, and served as treasurer in her father's expanding company. She worked as a relief volunteer in war-torn France, married a professional singer, and eventually became an unhappy wealthy woman whose life seemed to contradict the promise of her privileged beginnings. Through reconstructing Lucile's journey from her childhood through her final years, Berne discovers how families function to make sense of the mystery of identity and inheritance.
Genres: family, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-legacy, reconstruction
Setting: Cincinnati, France
Period: 20th Century, World War I
296 pages · Hardcover · Algonquin Books