In 1938, just before they were killed by the Nazis, Freida and Siegmund Westerfeld sent their twelve-year-old daughter Edith to live with relatives in Chicago. Edith escaped the death camps but was left profoundly adrift, cut off from culture, tradition, her entire identity. For decades she shut away her memories, until she realized that the void of her past was consuming her and her family. Then, with her daughter Fern Schumer Chapman -- herself a pregnant mother -- Edith returned to Germany.For Edith the trip was an act of courage, a chance to reconnect with her homeland and reconcile with her past. For Fern it was a miraculous opening, a break in the wall of silence surrounding her mother's past... and her mother. A memoir as lyrical as a novel, Motherland is the narrative of a personal transformation that examines the legacy of war. It is the story of learning to live with the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. In the tradition of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, Motherland probes a pain that shatters nations, divides generations, and outlives its perpetrators.