What Remains is Hope Blog Tour

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Book Title and Author Name

What Remains is Hope

Bonnie Suchman

Blurb:

Beginning in 1930s Germany and based on their real lives, four cousins as close as siblings—Bettina, Trudi, Gustav, and Gertrud—share the experiences of the young, including first loves, marriages, and children.

Bettina, the oldest, struggles to help her parents with their failing business. Trudi dresses in the latest fashions and tries to make everything look beautiful. Gustav is an artist at heart and hopes to one day open a tailoring shop. Gertrud, the youngest, is forced by her parents to keep secrets, but that doesn’t stop her from chasing boys. However, over their seemingly ordinary lives hangs one critical truth—they’re Jewish—putting them increasingly at risk.

When World War II breaks out, the four are still in Germany or German-occupied lands, unable or unwilling to leave. How will these cousins avoid the horrors of the Nazi regime, a regime that wants them dead? Will they be able to avoid the deportations and concentration camps that have claimed their fellow Jews? Danger is their constant companion, and it will take hope and more to survive.

**Praise for What Remains is Hope:**

“Readers will find this follow up to Suchman’s prior novel, Stumbling Stones, both a heartbreaking reminder of the Holocaust’s atrocities and a compelling tribute to a family’s refusal to surrender to despair…Richly compelling Holocaust account, centered on the power of hope.“

~ Booklife by Publishers Weekly

“Author Bonnie Suchman has a way of making every moment count with her characters in a narrative that feels powerfully real as she spins deeply personal stories against a sweeping and tragic backdrop of history. ..What Remains is Hope is historical fiction at its best, and I’d highly recommend it to fans of gripping fiction that’s emotionally resonant and grounded in truth.“

~ K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite

The Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga

What Remains is Hope is the second of three novels in the Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga. The Saga focuses on the families of three brothers – Joseph, Lazarus, and Maier – and grew out of research I conducted on my husband’s German Jewish family.

Like so many forced to flee their home, who carried with them the trauma related to their escape, my father-in-law never spoke about his family. So when I discovered that his grandmother and two aunts perished in the Holocaust and no one knew they even existed, I began to research the family. In 2021, after more than three years of research, I published a non-fiction book about that family, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany. Through this research, I discovered the Heppenheimer family, a remarkable family whose history tells the story of Jews in Germany from the late seventeenth century through the Holocaust.

Prior to the Nazi takeover in 1933, the Heppenheimers were successful scrap metal dealers. They owned large homes, office buildings, and industrial facilities. They employed maids and chauffeurs and enjoyed the trappings of upper middle-class lives. That all changed in 1933.

The first novel in the Holocaust Saga, Stumbling Stones, told the story of Alice Heppenheimer and her siblings, the children of Joseph. Beginning in 1920, the novel followed the family as they thrived in Germany, only to see their lives turn upside down following the Nazi takeover. What Remains is Hope follows the challenges of being a Jew in Nazi Germany, this time from the perspective of the younger generation descended from Lazarus Heppenheimer. The third novel in the series will tell the story of Maier Heppenheimer’s family.

In researching Broken Promises, I discovered the Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) project, which places brass plates in front of the homes of Jews who were forced to leave. The lucky ones were able to escape Germany, but many more perished in the Holocaust. I chose to name my first novel after this remarkable project.

In doing my research on the family, I discovered that a number of family members already had Stumbling Stones in place. In October 2021, stumbling stones were installed at the former home of Max and Recha Heppenheimer to remember them and their two sons Kurt (my father-in-law) and Alfred. In June of this year, we travelled to Germany to witness the installation of the stones for Alice and her husband Alfred, the main characters in Stumbling Stones. These stones serve as reminders of the Heppenheimer family and their remarkable lives in Germany.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mvJNLV

This book is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Author Bio:

Bonnie Suchman has been a practicing attorney for forty years. Using her legal skills, she researched her husband’s 250-year family history in Germany, publishing the award-winning, non-fiction book, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany, as a result.

Those compelling stories became Suchman’s Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga. The first in the series, Stumbling Stones, was a Finalist for the 2024 Hawthorne Prize for Fiction, and recently, her family traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, to install stumbling stones for her husband’s Great Aunt Alice and her husband Alfred, the real-life characters in the book.

What Remains is Hope is the second novel in the saga. In her free time, Bonnie is a runner and a golfer. She and her husband reside in Potomac, Maryland.