About the Book
Book: What I Left for You (Echoes of the Past Book Three)
Author: Liz Tolsma
Genre: Christian Fiction / Romance / Historical Fiction
Release date: December 1, 2024
A Family’s Ties Were Broken in Poland of 1939
1939
Helena Kostyszak is an oddity—an educated female ethnic minority lecturing at a university in Krakow at the outbreak of WWII. When the Germans close the university and force Jews into the ghetto, she spirits out a friend’s infant daughter and flees to her small village in the southern hills. Helena does everything in her power to protect her family, but it may not be enough. It will take all of her strength and God’s intervention for both of them to survive the war and the ethnic cleansing to come.
2023
Recently unengaged social worker McKenna Muir is dealt an awful blow when a two-year-old she’s been working with is murdered. It’s all too much to take, so her friend suggests she dive into her family’s past like she’s always wanted. Putting distance between herself and her problems might help her heal, so she and her friend head on Sabbatical to Poland. But what McKenna discovers about her family shocks everyone, including one long-lost family member.
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About the Author
Liz Tolsma is the author of several WWII novels, romantic suspense novels, prairie romance novellas, and an Amish romance. She is a popular speaker and an editor and resides next to a Wisconsin farm field with her husband and their youngest daughter. Her son is a US Marine, and her oldest daughter is a college student. Liz enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping.
More from Liz
I stared at my computer screen in front of me. For years, I had been searching for my great-grandmother, Anna. I got no good information. Census records in the US weren’t helpful. Some listed her birthplace as Czechoslovakia, while others had it as Austria. I had heard before that she might have been born in Czechoslovakia before, but never Austria. There were no records that I had come across that listed the city or town where she was born.
Until that one day. While searching for my great-grandmother, I ran across a passport application recorded in Warsaw, Poland, for an Anna with the same last name, though spelled differently. Her birthday was listed as 1903, which matched the birth year I knew for my great-grandmother’s niece. As I read through the application, my heart was pounding. This Anna was born in the United States but went to Dubne, Poland, with her family in 1906. It was now 1923, and she wanted to return to the US, and she would be living with…
I started to cry when I saw who her sponsor was. My great-grandfather. The name and address were correct. There could be no doubt about it. It had taken me years, but I finally made the jump to Europe and discovered that my great-grandmother was not born in Czechoslovakia but in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now Poland.
Of course, good little researcher that I am, I had to find out all I could about Dubne, the town they were from. That’s when I first came across the term Lemko. What on earth was that?
Lemkos are a Slavic people that settled in the Carpathian Mountains of Southern Poland, Northern Slovakia, and Western Ukraine. They are also known as Lemko Rusyns, Rusyns (especially those born in Slovakia, like my great-grandfather), and Carptho-Rusyns. The mountains kept the world at bay, and they developed their own language, customs, and form of Christianity. For the most part, they were very poor, many of them eking out a living from the rocky ground.
They lived in “black houses,” called that because the poorest people couldn’t afford to have a chimney built. The smoke from the cooking and heating fires stayed inside the house and covered the walls with black tar. If you look at the cemetery records from Dubne, you would be old if you lived into your fifties. Conditions were brutal.
The most the average Lemko could afford was one sheep or one pig. Since this was their most prized possession, they couldn’t take the chance of a wild animal or a neighbor taking it away, so it lived in the house with them.
With all of them. Up to eleven people would live in a two-room house. When I mentioned that in What I Left for You, my editor questioned if I had made a mistake. No, I didn’t. I have no idea how they fit all those people in there, but they did. As I was tracking one branch of our family tree, I kept coming up with people living in house 43. Over and over and over. They stuffed that house full. Grandparents, parents, and children all lived together. They may not have had much, but that forged the Lemkos into strong and resilient people.
I’m proud to be Lemko-Rusyn, and I’m thrilled to share this story with you. I infused Helena, the historical heroine, with as much of the Lemko spunk and spirit as I could. Last October, my daughter and I had the privilege to travel to Poland and Slovakia and see the Lemko homeland for ourselves. It helped me to write a better, richer story because I now understand where they came from and who they were. Enjoy Helena’s story and her journey during WWII and beyond. I hope you come to understand and appreciate the Lemko people as much as I have.
My Impressions
“No matter what, God.”
If you have read other reviews of What I Left for You by Liz Tolsma, you probably have already seen this quote, most likely headlining the review. I wanted to pick another quote, and there are several that I will mention later, but in order to face the darkness that is presented in this book, you need hope to hang on to. The darkness isn’t graphic, but we are dealing with persecuted Jews and other unwanted minorities, work camps, and unspeakable evil that we can only pray to learn from to avoid a repeat.
Tolsma starts her puzzle (for indeed, that is what a dual timeline is) with a young Polish Lemko woman, Helena, who is a guardian of a small child in Nazi-occupied Poland. The other woman is a recently unattached, present-day social worker, McKenna. A Pennsylvania native, McKenna has also been responsible for a young child’s safety.
I love how an author (Tolsma is so good at this) starts at the end of a combined story, but takes us back to the beginning of each separate thread and very slowly weaves the strands together. Each chapter starts with a line from the tragic “Song of Lemkoveyna.”
A glossary, pronunciation guide, and explanation of who the Lemkos are, is in the front of the book and most helpful. I still wished for a map, due to my own unfamiliarity with Eastern Europe.
Tolsma draws the reader into her novel with her first ominous paragraph, expertly setting the tone of dark expectation and dread. Indeed, as we read, and even the characters question God’s presence, slowly, the seeds of faith are being tended in hearts. Slowly, some look upwards in this harrowing tale, realizing that ultimately, “evil will never win. God’s good always triumphs.”
Also, a word of advice given is “ Remember the good.” That is exactly what first Jerzy, then later Helena do in order to survive the deplorable conditions they find themselves in. Even
McKenna, as she searches her ancestral homeland for clues to a long-lost relative, begins to view her difficult life differently. We can’t change what happens, but we can certainly change our perception of those events.
This is such a compelling book! You won’t be able to put it down. Grab some tissues, your fave comfort animal and drink, and settle in to learn about a minority persecuted in WWII that you probably had never heard of before. Discover the strength of the mother-child bond, and the immense love for one’s homeland. As we consider the lengths that Jerzy, Helena, and others go for love, ask yourself, how far would I go for another? Would I try to make it on my own power, or would I needs look upwards?
I received a copy of the book from the author and publisher via NetGalley. I also bought my own copy. No positive review was required, and all opinions are my own.
Notable Quotables:
“Happiness flies away on butterfly wings. Contentment is enduring. Lasting.”
“Everything about me was icy. My fingers. My cheeks. My toes. My heart. My soul.”- Helena
“You don’t have a crystal ball or a direct line to God.” “Ah.” Taylor sat back, broke the chocolate bar in half, and took a bite. “That’s where you’re wrong. I do have a direct line to God. It’s called prayer.” “But you can’t see into the future.” “I do know who controls what’s going to happen.”
“Every life is precious, created by God for a special purpose, so we aren’t going to leave you.”
“O tonight, and only for tonight, I would trust the Lord to watch over us. Tomorrow I would have to make the choice whether or not to put my faith in Him once again.”- Helena
“In times of war, we put our own needs aside and give our best to the greatest good.”
“From here the Lord will lead us in the way we should go. If we can’t trust Him, there is no one to trust.”– Jerzy
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Magnificent!! The darkness of WWII Poland is permeated by the Light of Hope. Liz Tolsma does WWII Inspirational fiction so well!
Blog Stops
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, January 7
lakesidelivingsite, January 7
Lots of Helpers, January 8
Pens Pages & Pulses, January 8
Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, January 9
Life on Chickadee Lane, January 9
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, January 10
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, January 10
Texas Book-aholic, January 11
Connie’s History Classroom , January 11
Locks, Hooks and Books, January 12
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, January 13
For Him and My Family, January 13
Stories By Gina, January 14 (Author Interview)
Mary Hake, January 14
Holly’s Book Corner, January 15
Betti Mace, January 16
Jeanette’s Thoughts, January 16
Bigreadersite, January 17
Blossoms and Blessings, January 17
Pause for Tales, January 18
Becca Hope: Book Obsessed, January 18
A Good Book and Cup of Tea, January 19
Lights in a Dark World, January 19
Cover Lover Book Review, January 20
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Liz is giving away the grand prize of a $25 Amazon e-Gift card and a print copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions 