Reviewed by Peter F. Eder

Senior Editor, The HUB Magazine
Contributing Editor, The Futurist Magazine

Katarina Tepesh has written a book with a candor often absent in a biography. She presents personal hardships and tragedies – never in a pitying way – in a fashion that offers insights, and underscores the grit and determination of the author, her mother and her siblings.

Woven through a vivid picture of former Yugoslavia during and after World War II – in the harsh and desperate conditions imposed by Russia’s Communism in Eastern Europe- is the story of a family’s personal struggles.

The first part of the book chronicles the family’s background and the formation of Ms. Tepesh’s family. According to the author: "A family background deeply dysfunctional … A father full of hate to his family … A violent alcoholic and his wife and children who were a burden to him."

The author’s upbringing was centered on the physical and psychological abuses by Ivan on his wife Bozena, and their six children. Finally, unable to bear the escalating physical abuse and psychological suffering, Bozena and her children fled their small town of Rogatec in 1966 and moved to Samobor, a city hours away --- it was their first step to freedom.

Ms. Tepesh recounts the next two years – struggles with horrid housing conditions, finding employment and earning a living wage, and the legal battles for a separation in a totally male dominated, legal, political system and culture. In April 1968, thanks to an aunt already in America, the family came to the U.S. as impoverished immigrants.

Part 2, equally candid, deals with the acclimation to America, the continued struggles to secure a better life, and the ongoing, often painful links to the deconstructed Yugoslavia. The saga highlights the author’s development, growth and return visits to Croatia and her father’s funeral in 1986.

Like a powerful beacon, Ms. Tepesh also highlights finding, understanding and using the legitimacy and power of women’s’ rights, and the positive effect it has had on her life and the lives of those around her.

Hers is a story that bears reading, telling and retelling.