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Becoming Sarah

A Novel

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Pub Date Oct 28 2025 | Archive Date Aug 21 2025

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Description

For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.

Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?

Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.

Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.
For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.

Can you call...

A Note From the Publisher

DIANE BOTNICK was born and raised in the Midwest. She called New York City home for years, writing while working for various organizations in support of the arts. Becoming Sarah is her debut novel. She and her family currently live in Cold Spring, New York.

DIANE BOTNICK was born and raised in the Midwest. She called New York City home for years, writing while working for various organizations in support of the arts. Becoming Sarah is her debut novel...


Advance Praise

"...witty, downright funny at times, [and] wonderfully hopeful. Becoming Sarah offers a brilliant quartet of unforgettable women who each crave a love that has been stifled but never destroyed.”—GLORIA JACOBS, former executive director of The Feminist Press and executive editor of Ms. Magazine

"Lyrically and meticulously composed....Not a traditional Holocaust story, Botnick’s narrative examines the effects of the detritus left behind by the great atrocity on those who survived as well as their offspring....Painful, dramatic, and ultimately triumphant." —KIRKUS REVIEWS

“…opens with a gut punch crafted so beautifully, it feels almost divine. Botnick masterfully weaves the “bundle of loose threads, each with its own beginning” as she carries the reader through decades and deep inside a world of survivors and strivers, of existentialists and cynics, sinners and saints. Full, fresh, and often startlingly funny, every page of this novel offers a new way of looking at the world, and just in time.”—AMY FRIEDMAN, author of Desperado’s Wife

“… a sweeping generational saga, told in oblique yet powerful prose. From Sarah’s birth in Auschwitz through many generations of daughters, Botnick shows us the slowly uncoiling effects of motherlessness, persecution, and displacement and how love weaves, struggles, and sometimes triumphs through it all.”—HELEN BENEDICT, author of The Good Deed and Wolf Season

“A prism-like gaze at the jewel of motherhood, with its sharp edges and smooth opaque surfaces…. Every sentence is meticulously written and not a word wasted.”—SUZZY ROCHE, singer, performer, author

“… the rare book I finished and wanted to immediately start reading all over again. Lush with figurative language, but spare in mood, this finely written novel mines the depths of an identity forged in deprivation but redeemed through resilience, love, and the lessons of loss. An impressive debut!”—BARBARA STARK-NEMON, author of Even in Darkness and Isabela’s Way


"...witty, downright funny at times, [and] wonderfully hopeful. Becoming Sarah offers a brilliant quartet of unforgettable women who each crave a love that has been stifled but never destroyed.”—...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9798896360001
PRICE $17.99 (USD)
PAGES 360

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Featured Reviews

Sarah is born against great odds at Auschwitz’. Most infants were killed immediately by the Nazi’s but she is spirited out and cared for by various women. The book chronicles Sarah’s journey through the years and that of her children. A different look at Holocaust survivor novels and recommended for all public libraries.

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