We Share the Same Sky
“‘Read it again,’ my children used to implore, each time I closed a bedtime book. I feel that way now about We Share the Same Sky. Rachael Cerrotti’s narrative, and all Holocaust-related memoirs, should be told and retold, read and reread. Though the survivors are leaving us now, their stories remain and will be part of our collective memory: the part that makes us human.”
Lois Lowry, Newbery Medal–winning author of The Giver and Number the Stars
An Apple Best Book of the Month
Shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Winner of the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Memoir
Winner of the Maine Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Listed as a "Best Book of the Month" by Apple Books
In 2009 Rachael Cerrotti, a college student pursuing a career in photojournalism, asked her grandmother, Hana, if she could record her story. Rachael knew that her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor and the only one in her family alive at the end of the war. Rachael also knew that she survived because of the kindness of strangers. It wasn't a secret. Hana spoke about her history publicly and regularly. But, Rachael wanted to document it as only a granddaughter could. So that's what they did: Hana talked and Rachael wrote.
Upon Hana's passing in 2010, Rachael discovered an incredible archive of her life. There were preserved albums and hundreds of photographs dating back to the 1920s. There were letters waiting to be translated, journals, diaries, deportation and immigration papers as well as creative writings from various stages of Hana's life.
Rachael digitized and organized it all, plucking it from the past and placing it into her present. Then she began retracing her grandmother's story, following her through Central Europe, Scandinavia, and across the United States. She tracked down the descendants of those who helped save her grandmother's life during the war. Rachael went in pursuit of her grandmother's memory to explore how the retelling of family stories becomes the history itself.
We Share the Same Sky weaves together the stories of these two young women-Hana as a refugee who remains one step ahead of the Nazis at every turn, and Rachael, whose insatiable curiosity to touch the past guides her into the lives of countless strangers, bringing her love and tragic loss. Throughout the course of her twenties, Hana's history becomes a guidebook for Rachael in how to live a life empowered by grief.
Praise