The Wanderers
A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Mar 31, 2026
- Page Count
- 304 pages
- Publisher
- Grand Central Publishing
- ISBN-13
- 9780306834301
Price
$30.00Price
$40.00 CADFormat
Format:
- Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
- ebook $15.99 $20.99 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
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Daniela Gerson and her wife Talia met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust – one that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, send them to Siberia and Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this journey with more than 200,000 Polish Jews, sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers” – a group that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes. A story that, to the dismay of the world, remains relevant each time a political upheaval wreaks havoc on individual lives.
Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, part contemporary reporting on war-torn territories, The Wanderers chronicles Daniela’s journey to unearth this past with her wife, and reveal its echoes in still-contested lands from Poland to Ukraine to Israel. The Wanderers is a groundbreaking narrative history, and a meditation on how a home left behind and a desperate journey to survive reverberates across borders and through generations.
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