An incredibly moving memoir by the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. I really enjoyed this Jewish family history story, researched, written and read by the author. Great on audio, it made me want to talk to my grandmother more and learn about her life and stories. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

This was an emotional retelling of a grandmother's story by the granddaughter. There were bits of Holocaust and WWII history in there and it kept my attention. I enjoyed the book. As an educator, I would recommend the book to anyone looking for a story of humanity, relationships, and history.

This was really interesting. I was facinated by everything Cerrotti's grandmother left behind, including photos from when she was a child. I looked at Cerrotti's website when I started the book, so I knew to expect the death of her husband, but it was still really sad. This was a great book and the author did a good job of narrating it.

Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for the gifted book!

I knew this book was a granddaughter writing her grandmother's Holocaust story, but what I was pleasantly surprised by is it's also the granddaughter's memoir of writing that story, tracing the footsteps her grandmother walked, and living out her own life story in light of that. In one word I would describe this book as evocative. You feel the tension Rachael feels as she pieces together the real life places and people who crafted her grandmother's story, and you experience the roller coaster of emotions that brings to her own life and experiences. I love stories, real or imagined, about the connection of people. People befriending one another, strangers becoming family, an acquaintance changing the trajectory of a life. This is one of those stories that celebrates what it means to be human and what it means to be connected by time and events that shape the world.

This book was written and read by Rachael Cerrotti. Sometimes it felt as though we were in conversation about her Grandmother's memories and Rachael's retracing of her footsteps. I enjoyed it very much and learned bits of Holocaust history I did not know.

‘We Share the Same Sky’ is both Cerrotti’s story of retracing and describing her grandmother’s life based on diary entries, personal memories and recollections of others, as well as her own memoir of life and loss. The book goes back and forth through time to relate to grandmother ‘Hana’ as a young Jewish woman in war-torn Europe: a refugee, stateless, and migrant who flees for the Nazi’s from Poland to Denmark. The pain and simultaneous also the luck which brought Hana to her personal safe haven, where she was accepted into different families as one of them. Struggling to balance daily life with the unimaginable losses that she faced much too young.

Cerrotti is an artist with words and the synthesis of the two stories of the young women – Hana and Rachael – leaves the reader both emotionally touched and overflowing with love for life. It’s an extraordinary personal debut.

This is a wonderful story of Hana and Rachel. The story is nicely written and narrated by Rachel. Thanks NetGalley for the acess to this audiobook.

As a major book lover, there is nothing better than that rare occasion when a book speaks completely to you. Rachael Cerrotti's memoir, travel and historical book, We Share the Same Sky, could have been written specifically for me.

This was the perfect (reading) journey. I love, and have read, many books about travel experiences, ancestry, and survivors of WWII. This wraps all those subjects up in an incredible package.

So much of this book is about connecting. Cerrotti is able to connect the stories and history surrounding her grandmother, Hana's life. Through her travels, she seeks out the truth, putting together the pieces of an elaborate puzzle. Through wonderful people she met along the way, Cerrotti is able to connect with her grandmother, her roots, and with herself. Self-discovery comes from observing, exploring and processing the world and our place in it. Cerrotti's journey is the perfect example of that.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up
Hana Dubova proudly wore a pin that declared her an “outrageous older woman.” “Rachael tells her grandmother’s story through her own words – diaries, letters, conversation, testimony – but also through the lives of those who knew her and those who saved her.” It was interesting to read a book about a Jewish woman who was saved because her parents sent her to work in Denmark at age 14. Later, she was smuggled aboard a Swedish fishing boat.

Cerrotti’s writing is strongest when she writes in an essay style. Speaking of her grandmother Hana, she writes, “She was a strong-willed teen, a refugee, and an orphan. She was a survivor and a victim, a wanderer and someone who dreamed of home…an urban dweller and a farmer… She was a Czech child, a stateless teen, and an American wife. She was a traveler, an explorer, a teacher, and a student. She spoke six languages.”

As with many books about WWII, the old story is more than strong enough to stand on its own. Cerrotti records her personal thoughts and feelings, as she literally traces her grandmother’s journeys across Europe and America. At the end of Hana’s story, Rachael went into much more detail with her own story. While tragic, I did not find it as compelling. In my opinion, it didn’t seem to fit the narrative of a “memoir of memory and migration.”

I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, as well as read the ARC. I found that Ms. Cerrotti’s voice didn’t have as many inflections and nuances as a professional narrator. It was occasionally difficult to distinguish when she was reading quotes from Hana’s letters or diaries. An advantage of the book is that there are a few photographs of Hana and those who helped her at the end.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an ARC of this book.

I always feel very emotional whenever I read or hear stories about WWII. Cerrotti’s memoir made me bawl my eyes out. In this memoir we follow Rachael, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, retracing the trajectory of her grandmother, Hana Dubova - a Jewish Czech woman who survived the Holocaust - from Czechoslovakia to the United States.

Her grandmother flew to Denmark at the age of fourteen to escape from Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. She was the only one of her family who survived. All the other ones died in concentration camps. To dig into her grandmother’s history, Cerrotti travels to Europe, and goes to places where her grandmother had been, meets with the descendants of people who helped her grandmother to escape, follows all her steps while also documenting everything.

Based on her grandmother’s journals, photographs and documents, Rachael has a good picture of her grandmother’s footsteps. Telling Hana Dubova’s history, Cerrotti tells her own. The author feels responsible to tell her grandmother’s struggles for future generations, an example of perseverance, determination, survival, and empowerment. Dubova’s history also helps Rachael in many ways.

Beautifully written, the audiobook is incredibly narrated by the author who pours all her emotions on it, making her memoir come to life. I do not easily cry reading books, but I cried listening to this one. I believe this is a very good sign. I highly recommend We Share the Same Sky.

Rachel is a podcaster who is telling her grandmothers story of life before, during and after the Holocaust. Not only does she listen as her grandmother tells her life story, but as an adult as decides to follow her grandma’s steps and retrace her life herself and see the things she saw as well as how things have changed. It was interesting to see all that the people had to go through during that time period and the way Rachel also went back and talked to the people who were still alive (or their families for those that weren’t ) of those that helped her grandmother stay alive during those awful times added an extra dimension to the story.
Rachel telling her own story added emotion to it as well, and hearing of her own life as compared to her grandmother’s was interesting as well.
Overall, while it wasn’t an easy read because of the topic, it was well done in that it was in simple terms and language that made it easy to listen to.
Thanks to Blackstone Publishing and Netgalley for this Arc in exchange for my review.

Rachel Cerrotti’s curiosity about her grandmother’s past sends her on a decade’s-long journey to understand the events, places, and people that shaped her grandmother from an untried girl to the woman Rachel respected and adored. Hana, Rachel’s grandmother, had escaped Poland and found refuge from Hitler in Scandinavia. Along the way, multiple strangers helped her, sheltered her, and contributed to her story.

Cerrotti retraces her grandmother’s steps and finds descendants of those who played a part in Hana’s escape. Interspersed with Cerrotti’s memoir, the reader hears snippets of Hana’s diary, letters to home and to friends, and essays written in her later years.

Cerrotti’s story evokes a visceral reaction to events that took place decades before my birth and paints a picture of the generational effects of trauma on a white Jewish family. Overall, I enjoyed the audiobook and it made me ponder many things about life, grief, immigration, memory, and loss.

I work with a population of students who also suffer from the generational effects of trauma. Only, they aren’t white or Jewish. Despite sharing a history of genocide with the author, my Native American students share little else. They smoke joints as a way of coping with their family histories, but unlike Cerrotti, they don’t get a pass because they are neither white nor upper class.

They can’t spend years traipsing all over Europe (or even the United States) in search of those who extended kindness to their grandparents, because few people have extended kindness to Native Americans. My students find themselves entangled in a web of poverty, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse from which they have little chance of escaping.

Every time I heard the narrator (Cerrotti narrates the book) casually mention smoking a joint, I felt angry at the inequality. My students go to juvie for smoking a joint. Cerrotti gets to write a book and talk casually about her illegal-in-many-states behavior.

As the granddaughter of a woman who escaped genocide, and one who has power, position, and influence, I expected more from the author. Cerrotti writes beautifully about grief, the interconnectedness of people, friendships, and love. But I can’t use her story as an example of exploring generational trauma through storytelling for my students because it glamorizes the demon besetting two generations of Native Americans.

The average white American should listen to this book, though. And then look around and ask themselves what they can do to right wrongs, uplift those caught in fatal webs, and further the cause of equality on their own street, in their own town, and their own state.

A pulsating and an awe-inspiring story of author and her grandmother Hana, a holocaust survivor and the only person from her family to survive world War-2.

When she passes away in 2010, author puts her shoes on her story of holocaust, places where Hana have been during her days as refugee and people she's been in contact with, or their relatives.

From Hana's diaries, pictures and excerpts, Rachel visits all the possible places like museums, or where refugees lived. She gathers information about refugees migration, descendants who saved Hana's life during the war and countless stories of hope and grief.

"We share the Same Sky" is an incredible journey of Hana and Rachel, two young women who shares common thread of loss and resilience.

There're so much more than a book about holocaust. It's an inspiring journey through time that interweaves threads of remembrance, sorrow, creating a beautiful anecdote of love and light.

Grandma Hana's Story

Rachel is a student of photojournalism, she studies hard and wishes to make it her career. One day as her grandmother Hana is aging she sits down with her and asks her to tell her story of a Jewish girl living through the Holocaust.

Rachel is enthralled by her grandmother's story and decides to go to Europe and follow in her grandmother's travels as she leaves her home country to evade the Nazi's only to have the Nazi's occupy the country where she has migrated. Her grandmother's wish was always to migrate to Israel, she was part of the Zion movement.

As Rachel travels she has a better understanding of her grandmother's story and how it affected all that lived through those times. Rachel narrates the story herself and does a very good job of it.
It was an interesting historical and travel story of the war years and one Jewish family. I would recommend this story.

Thanks to Rachel Cerrotti, Blackstone Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me access to a complimentary audio book copy for my honest review.

As a college student, Cerrotti approached her grandmother, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust, hoping to record the older woman’s memories of that darkest of times. Grandmother Hana told her story, from the cruelty and brutality of the Nazi regime to the kindness of others who helped her survive. A year later when Hana passes away, Rachael discovers letters, photographs, diaries and immigration papers that document almost every moment of her grandmother’s life and realizes that the story she started with Hana, has really just begun. Combining her own life experiences with those of her grandmother, Cerrotti weaves together both an incredible story of survival and heroism with the fabric of family life and family story. Highy recommended