Book Title: Stumbling Stones

Series: n/a

Author: Bonnie Suchman

Publication Date: May 9, 2024

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Page Length: 282

Genre: Historical Fiction

Twitter Handle: @BonnieSuchman @cathiedunn

Instagram Handle: @bonniesuchmanauthor @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #JewishHistory #FamilyHistory #WWII #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

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Book Title and Author Name:

Stumbling Stones

by Bonnie Suchman

Blurb:

Shortlisted for the Hawthorn Prize 2024

“Alice knew that Selma sometimes felt judged by their mother and didn’t always like it when Alice was praised and Selma was not. Alice glanced over at her sister, but Selma was smiling at Alice. In what Alice understood might be Selma’s last act of generosity towards her sister, Selma was going to let Alice bask in the glow of Emma’s pride toward her elder daughter. Then the three shared a hug, a hug that seemed to last forever.”

Alice Heppenheimer, born into a prosperous German Jewish family around the turn of the twentieth century, comes of age at a time of growing opportunities for women.

So, when she turns 21 years old, she convinces her strict family to allow her to attend art school, and then pursues a career in women’s fashion. Alice prospers in her career and settles into married life, but she could not anticipate a Nazi Germany, where simply being Jewish has become an existential threat. Stumbling Stones is a novel based on the true story of a woman driven to achieve at a time of persecution and hatred, and who is reluctant to leave the only home she has ever known.

But as strong and resilient as Alice is, she now faces the ultimate challenge – will she and her husband be able to escape Nazi Germany or have they waited too long to leave?

Why I Chose the Title “Stumbling Stones”

Germans have coined the term “Erinnerungskultur,” or “culture of remembrance,” to refer to the policy of confronting Nazi-era crimes by acknowledging responsibility for the Holocaust. Erinnerungskultur has resulted in large-scale government-funded memorials throughout Germany. But the culture of remembrance has also resulted in grassroots initiatives like the “Stolpersteine” or “stumbling stones” – small, engraved brass paving stones commemorating victims in the streets where they used to live. A German artist, Gunter Demnig, began this commemoration project in 1993 to commemorate the victims of Nazi oppression, which included Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, and dissidents.

In the prologue to my novel Stumbling Stones, the reader is introduced to stumbling stones, and three stumbling stones in particular – the stones of Alice Heppenheimer’s sister, mother, and brother-in-law. The novel is based on a true story, and those stumbling stones do exist, in front of Böhmerstrasse 60 in Frankfurt, Germany. The residents of the apartment building decided to have stumbling stones placed in front of their building to remember Emma Heppenheimer and Selma and Lippmann Lewin, and the stones were laid in 2014. Here are their stones:

None of the apartment owners had any obvious connection to Emma, Selma or Lippmann, but I would like to think that they were inspired by Erinnerungskultur.

After learning about the Stolpersteine project from the research I had done on his family, my husband and his siblings decided to have stumbling stones laid for their father, uncle, grandfather, and grandmother. On October 12, 2021, stumbling stones were placed at the former home of Max and Recha Heppenheimer in Mannheim, Germany, to remember them and their two sons Kurt (Curtis) and Alfred (Fred). Even though my husband’s father (Curtis), uncle, and grandmother survived the Holocaust, they were still victims, having been forced from their home and forced to emigrate to survive.

Stolpersteine are intended to remind us of the victims of the Holocaust in a personal way, because you can see and touch the brass plates. Every time you walk by a plate embedded in a sidewalk, you are reminded that the person commemorated on the plate had live in the building and had been forced to leave that home by the Nazis. That person may have emigrated to America or may perished in the Holocaust. Either way, that person was a victim. And so, I chose the title Stumbling Stones because I wanted the book to serve as a stumbling stone for Alice Heppenheimer. She was victim because all European Jews were victims of the Holocaust. And I also chose the title because I wanted to remind the reader of the importance of remembering the Holocaust. We don’t have Stolpersteine in America, and so I hope my book can serve as a stumbling stone to the reader, for Alice and for all the victims of the Holocaust.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/4ND1x8

Author Bio:

Bonnie Suchman is an attorney who has been practicing law for forty years. Using her legal skills, she researched her husband’s family’s 250-year history in Germany, and published a non-fiction book about the family, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany. Bonnie found one member of the family, Alice Heppenheimer, particularly compelling. Stumbling Stones tells Alice’s story. Bonnie has two adult children and lives in Maryland with her husband, Bruce.

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