This gripping memoir traces Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahl’s journey to uncover her grandparents’ roles in the Third Reich as she is driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitler’s elite, the SS. Out of the unbearable heart of the story—the unclaimed guilt that devours a family through the generations—emerges an unflinching will to learn the truth. In a remarkable six-year journey through Germany, Poland, Paraguay, and Brazil, Julie uncovers, among many other discoveries, that her grandfather had been a fanatic member of the SS since 1934. During World War II, he was responsible for enslavement and torture and was complicit in the murder of the local population on the large estates he oversaw in occupied Poland. He eventually fled to South America to evade a new wave of war-crimes trials. The pendulum used by Julie’s grandmother to divine good from bad and true from false becomes a symbol for the elusiveness of truth and morality, but also for the false securities we cling to when we become unmoored. As Julie delves deeper into the abyss of her family’s secret, discovering history anew, one precarious step at a time, the compassion of strangers is a growing force that transforms her world and the way that she sees her family—and herself.

"In this powerful and solemn memoir, Lindahl (Rose in the Sand), who was born in Brazil to a German family, recounts seeking the truth about her grandparents’ Nazi past, which her family hid from her. In prose that is formal, yet poetic and heartfelt (“While truth can be elusive, often staring at us from outside the rain-spattered window of our own perception, the failure to believe that it exists... is the seed of self-destruction”), Lindahl shares what she learned during seven years of research and travel. Many readers will be moved and find meaning in Lindahl’s journey to come to terms with her family’s past and process the guilt of inherited sins" - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"In a work a lifetime in the making, [Lindahl] writes of her awakening to the pieces missing in her history and the drive that led her to ask difficult questions about her grandparents and their roles in the Nazi SS . . . From discovering unknown family in South America to accepting that wounds were necessary to open in order to heal, Lindahl shows how generations can suffer silence and shame throughout the years, and the importance of coming to terms with the truth in order to find closure. This powerful work reveals how people adversely impacted by the past persevere, even while living alongside the perpetrators who still carry prejudice." - Library Journal

"A sustained rumination on the morbid past and how vitally essential it is to confront this honestly. . . [Lindahl] has set an example we must hope her students and our society will follow.”" - The Historian