What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past by Nancy K. Miller, has won the very first Jewish Journal Book Prize.
The prize is given in recognition of a book of exceptional interest, achievement and significance and is selected by The Jewish Journal’s book editor and its editor-in-chief.
What They Saved was chosen because “…Miller’s account of her own experience is exceptional in the grace of her prose, the depth of her insight and the power of her gifts as a storyteller,” according to an article on the Jewish Journal's website.
Miller’s book was originally reviewed in The Jewish Journal on Oct. 4, 2011 by Jonathan Kirsch.
Kirsch first said, “What They Saved can be approached as an illuminating and instructive example of how to conduct a genealogical investigation. But it is also a rich and accomplished family chronicle, full of fascinating incidents and turbulent emotions. Above all, it is a searing work of self-exploration, artful and eloquent in the telling but heartbreaking in its candor.”
In What They Saved, Miller discovers a minuscule family archive: a handful of photographs, an unexplained land deed, a postcard from Argentina, unidentified locks of hair after her father’s death. These items had been passed down again and again, but what did they mean? Miller follows their traces from one distant relative to another, across the country, and across an ocean. Her story, unlike the many family memoirs focused on the Holocaust, takes us back earlier in history to the world of pogroms and mass emigrations at the turn of the twentieth century.
What They Saved has also been praised by Kirkus Reviews calling it “an unusual, intellectual perspective on an often-told story."
