Biographies&Memoirs Audiobooks - page 2

This is the story of the other victims of German occupation in France, the story of my mother who was separated from her family and fled, and the torture that remained with her forever.<br><br>These are the memoirs as told to me by my mother. I have attempted to tell her story as accurately as she presented them to me, piecing together her own written journals, along with various anecdotes that supplemented and peppered stories over my lifetime, without embellishing by interposing my own interpretations of events. This is not a suspense novel, although certainly the events recounted herein were suspenseful to those who experienced them. They certainly sounded suspenseful to me as I heard and read them. So as to avert embarrassment to anyone reading these words, I have on occasion chosen to use pseudonyms, while trying to keep the gist of the story true to form. My mother was French, and occasionally some French words and phrases appear throughout the text. I have included translations wherever appropriate. She also lived and studied in Italy before moving to Israel, and eventually to the United States. Again, where words and phrases are included in those languages, and I have included translations to the best of my ability.

In 1994, Lizbeth Meredith said good-bye to her four- and six year-old daughters for a visit with their non-custodial father only to learn days later that they had been kidnapped and taken to their father's home country of Greece. Twenty-nine and just on the verge of making her dreams of financial independence for her and her daughters come true, Lizbeth now faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget. For the next two years fueled by memories of her own childhood kidnapping Lizbeth traded in her small life for a life more public, traveling to the White House and Greece, and becoming a local media sensation in order to garner interest in her efforts. The generous community of Anchorage becomes Lizbeth's makeshift family one that is replicated by a growing number of Greeks and expats overseas who help Lizbeth navigate the turbulent path leading back to her daughters.

In order to survive her childhood, Vanya Erickson was forced to become fluent in two languages: her Christian Scientist mother’s honeyed versions of the truth; and her rancher father’s hard-as-the-scrape-of-his-bootheels words, which stung like the back of his hand. Long version: From the outside, Vanya’s childhood of riding horses with her father in the solitude of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and attending flamboyant operas with her mother in the city looked idyllic. But life for Vanya was more about learning to gauge and survive her parents’ unpredictable actions - from being left to lie in her own blood-soaked diaper while her Christian Scientist mother prayed, refusing to get medical help, to watching her father writhe on his bed in the detox ward, his hands and feet tethered with leather straps. Vanya the only way she knew how: by immersing herself in the beauty and solitude of the wilderness around her.