World War II serves as the backdrop for a love story: the love among family members and friends, with the beginning and ending in Niedzieliska, Poland.For 52 years (1933-1985), we follow the lives of sisters Sofia and Bronislawa and, more especially, the growing friendship between their daughters, Evie and Jadzia. Rebecca Thaddeus calls upon her own Polish-American family’s lore to create a powerful and hypnotic portrait of these families and friends, presenting her readers with the savagery of Nazism contrasted with the sweetness of first love. Thaddeus brings us to Chicago as an up-and-coming young family learns to accept its Polish heritage amid the rebellions of the younger generations. Throughout the book, there is a subtle but persuasive message: Accept others and ourselves for who we and they are. In the end, we are left with sadness at having to shut the book on these strongly drawn characters, but with hopes that Rebecca Thaddeus will write at least one sequel.
Sharon Robideaux, co-author (with Eleanor Agnew) of My Mama’s Waltz
One Amber Bead is a rich, radiant story of two Polish cousins, whose lives diverge dramatically in the yellow wood of the 20th Century—Evie, who encounters the challenges of an immigrant’s daughter in Chicago, and Jadzia, who witnesses the devastation of her homeland during WW II—and yet who find in that divergence a solidarity of humanity and compassion engendered in their shared heritage. Melding the best traditions of the epistolary novel, the historical novel, the family saga, and the romance, One Amber Bead glows with a unique hue—rich in story and detail, resplendent in the recognition of how our lives are both altered and remain the same, even through the turbulence of familial and cultural change.
Phillip Sterling, author of In Which Brief Stories Are Told
Rebecca Thaddeus’s One Amber Bead speaks to the hearts of all those Americans whose ancestors emigrated to this country at the beginning of the 20th Century. In her moving and compelling narrative, she captures our need to maintain our ties with those who were left behind.
John Guzlowski, author of Lightning and Ashes