Join us and invite friends to a Book Reading and Presentation on Saturday, October 4th at 7 PM – All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss by NH author Dena Rueb Romero
Author Dena Rueb Romero grew up in Hanover, NH, the daughter of a Lutheran mother and a Jewish father, both refugees from Nazi Germany. Her book All for You, offers a moving historical memoir of her parents’ journey. Emil Rueb was the son of a successful German Jewish realtor and businessman; Deta was a well-regarded children’s nurse from a large Lutheran family. After the Nazis came to power, the Nuremberg Laws made relationships between Jews and “Aryans” illegal; to stay together, their only hope was to emigrate. Deta soon left for a childcare job in England, but Emil lingered, hesitant to leave family and insecure about starting over as a professional photographer. When he did get out, landing first in New York before securing a position in Hanover, New Hampshire, his main focus was to be financially enough to reunite with Deta and to bring his parents, sister, and brother-in-law to America. Romero uses both family documents and historical research to flesh out her parents’ moving story: their abiding love across years of separation, the growing hostilities toward the German Jewish population, her grandparents’ increasing desperation, and Emil’s hard work to help them all. All For You is a beautiful testament to love, a deeply moving tribute to loss, family, and a compassionate recounting of this period of her father’s life.
“Dena Romero brings to life her parents’ odyssey and boundless patience during long years of separation, uncertainty, and hardship. Supported by miraculously preserved documents, the book tracks with remarkable sensitivity the harrowing 1930s and 1940s in vile Nazi Germany, dithering Britain, and standoffish America. It is a moving, tragic story captivatingly told.” —Dr. Franz Baumann, Vice President of the Academic Council on the United Nations System; former Assistant Secretary-General of the Relations.
This will be the only reading she will be offering in Southern VT and the story seems especially relevant for these times we are in.