Letters To Oma

After her family moves from Germany to Texas in 1847, fifteen-year-old Tina chronicles in letters to her grandmother their struggle to survive in a strange new place while preserving their traditional German ways.

After her family moves from Germany to Texas in 1847, fifteen-year-old Tina chronicles in letters to her grandmother their struggle to survive in a strange new place while preserving their traditional German ways.

It was a summer of content. Three generations of family in one household. The escapades of two very rambunctious grandkids caught the hearts of friends and neighbors, here in Michigan, as they followed the stories of Liam and Zellie on social media. Until the day we lost our precious two-year-old Zellie. Opa's little girl. The world crashed down on my shoulders so hard; it drove me to my knees. I had choices to make: to look up or look away. I looked up. I thought I knew God, and I tried to bargain with Him. Nothing seemed to work. Answers I received though helped me form a letter, which I sent directly to God. After that - I wrote directly to Zellie. These are Letters to Heaven. With these letters, I shared the horrible pain our family was going through. Friends and family responded to the raw view of pain and prayers they read about. There was no getting around the emotions of that stinging loss, but we all began healing at about the same time. From that agonizing moment to this day, I find God sending people our way to help us on our life's journey together. He also sent us quick glimpses into Heaven, which you'll read about in this book. I learned the hard way that the pain never goes away. And it may sound strange to say, but you don't want it to because that means forgetting. Determined not to forget my beautiful Zellie's face, or the way she wiggled when she laughed, I chose to remember. And the pain I merely survived. This story will take you through a grandfather's love, loss, and a rediscovery of faith. With that faith, hope emerged -- the hope of seeing Zellie again in Heaven. Because, trust me, Heaven is real. Really real.

In From Fragmentation to Coherence, the author Sacha van Rood presents a theory for the genesis of autism and the disorder known as "derealization/depersonalization" by demonstrating the connections between them and tracing the roots to events in early childhood. She discusses the crucial importance of creating a functional perception of reality in the early months and years of life, and the environmental conditions that must be present for this process to succeed. She identifies certain factors in modern lifestyles that may hamper the creation of a functional perception of reality, leading in the most extreme cases to a disastrous rupturing of a child's development. Van Rood's theory, which gives an explanation for the experience of unreality that is intrinsic to derealization and depersonalization, also suggests possible paths to the prevention -- and in some cases possibly even a cure -- for the disorder known as autism.

Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison. From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she’s expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments—especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s—Luisa’s work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II. Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There’s only one way to reach his family—by sending coded letters to his father-in-law who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain. When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather’s work, her father’s identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive. As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night’s promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived, for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol. A Cold War novel that takes readers to the heart of Berlin to witness both the early and final days of the Berlin Wall Stand-alone novel Book length: approximately 107,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs