Starr, Beatrice, PH D

Stumbling Home: My Life as an Imposter Starr, Beatrice, PH D

Before the period of unthinkable persecution of Jews, before the decade of terrifying peril, two Eastern European immigrants came to Brooklyn, New York to start new lives. But the bone-chilling echoes of the Holocaust and the family left behind never ceased and filled them with dread but also rage. Their two children born during this period were raised amidst violence and chaos. Stumbling Home, a Memoir is the story of Beatrice, the daughter who took her parents' determination to create new lives to a new level. At the age of sixteen, she ran away from home and assumed the identity of a Russian student, foreign accent and all. She lived at Judson Foreign Student Residence and International House of Columbia University while working weekends to make ends meet. But a violent attack on Beatrice led her to yet another realm of self-discovery, when she sought help from a therapist, beginning the decades-long process of rebirth that would bring her to a career in psychology and a fulfilling personal life as a wife, mother, and passionate Zionist. Personal and profound, Stumbling Home is the remarkable story of a woman dedicated to survival, and whose identity as a Jew has illuminated and inspired every decision, from the ordinary to the transcendent.