Recurring series

Behind the Book: Just Enough to Start Over with Sara Gothelf Bloom

Ryder Library is pleased to welcome Sara Gothelf Bloom for Behind the Book: Just Enough to Start Over. Get the chance to hear about Sara's writing process, the book's journey through publishing, and explore writing prompts inspired by the book! A pianist, an artist, and a poet, the three Dubrovsky sisters have grown up in comfort in Mannheim, Germany. As the threat of the Nazi party looms ever larger, the family packs their lives into two crates and flees to China. Just Enough to Start Over follows their experiences as refugees in Shanghai (and London, and Toronto); their crash-landing with a cousin in New York; the slow effort to build a life in a new country; and, later, the struggle of the family’s American daughter to find her own identity outside of their difficult history. Echoing the Dubrovskys’ odyssey is the story of their three valuable paintings. First stolen, then transported through wartime Europe and the Soviet Union, these artworks and the lives they encounter on their journeys deepen the book’s perspectives. Meanwhile, historical figures including Max Beckmann, the Austrian Expressionist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, and members of the Soviet Trophy Brigade all play their parts in this wry and poignant novel of loss, resilience, and the saving grace of creating art. Sara Gothelf Bloom is a local Sunset Park author. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and spent much of her adult life in Germany, working at the Heidelberg Opera and as a freelance concert singer. For more than twenty years, she toured the country as a soloist with a small ensemble doing concerts of Yiddish songs for German audiences. Today, she lives in Brooklyn, and Just Enough to Start Over is her first novel.