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In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule

Author of A Woman in Amber Writes First Novel of Post War Survival

Apr 19, 2009 Christine Eirschele

Agate Nesaule writes first novel, In Love with Jerzy Kosinski, about post war and immigrant struggles in America. A Woman in Amber was Nesaule's award-winning memoir.

At the fictitious Cloudy Lake, Wisconsin, Anna Duja finds herself in another kind of confinement. Anna has come to America and made a life for herself after fleeing World War II and a Russian interment camp for displaced persons. Now, Anna is married to Stanley who loves her, as long as she does what he wants.

Anna has dreams but she is unsure she deserves, much less should allow, them to happen. With the camaraderie of friends like Julie, Marge, Sara and Molly, they and Anna persist in escaping the memories they struggle against.

Anna makes the painful decision to move to Madison and gradually rebuilds her life, inspired by her hero Jerzy Kosinski. She learns to drive a car, creates a home alone, then finds romance.

Second Generation Holocaust Survivors

In Love with Jerzy Kosinski explores the real life difficulties of adjusting in Midwestern America after experiencing the horrors of war. In the novel, Nesaule tells a fictional story of Latvian immigrants. The every day routines conflict with the internal suffering of memories and guilt that were not left behind in Eastern Europe.

Anna questions how much suffering, for how long and what amount of guilt is enough. She visits Elga in Indiana where Anna and other Latvian survivors stayed after arriving in America and where she first met Stanley. Elga cared for Anna when she was a child but now Anna no longer feels she belongs in the old neighborhood.

Who is Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski was a real-life survivor of the Holocaust. Kosinski was born in Poland of Jewish parents, just as Hitler was coming into power.

Most famous for writing The Painted Bird, it was the story of a six-year-old boy living through World War II in Germany. Steps, the author’s second novel won a National Book Award. Kosinski committed suicide in 1991.

Wisconsin Author Agate Nesaule

Agate Nesaule is author of A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile, a memoir that won her an American Book Award. Born in Latvia, Nesaule is a professor emerita of English and women’s studies at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Agate Nesaule lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Nesaule, Agate. In Love with Jerzy Kosinski March 17, 2009, Terrace Books of University of Wisconsin Press, 218 pages. ISBN 978-0-299-23130-9

For books by other Wisconsin authors consider The Typewriter Satyr by Dwight Allen or Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages by Sara Rath.

Permission received for all photos used in this article.

The copyright of the article In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule in American Fiction is owned by Christine Eirschele. Permission to republish In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Wisconsin Author Agate Nesaule