The Light at the End of the Day

A family scattered. Lovers torn apart. A painting that unites them all. When Jozef is commissioned to paint a portrait of the younger daughter of Kraków’s grand Oderfeldt family, it is only his desperate need for money that drives him to accept. He has no wish to indulge a pampered child-princess or her haughty, condescending parents – and almost doesn’t notice Alicia’s bookish older sister, Karolina. But when he is ushered by a servant into their house on Kraków’s fashionable Bernadyńska street in the winter of 1937, he has no inkling of the way his life will become entangled with the Oderfeldts'. Or of the impact that the German invasion will have upon them all. As Poland is engulfed by war, and Jozef’s painting is caught up in the tides of history, Alicia, Karolina and their parents are forced to flee – their Jewish identity transformed into something dangerous, and their comfortable lives overturned ... Spanning countries and decades The Light at the End of the Day is a heart-breaking novel of exile, survival and how we remember what is lost. A family scattered. Lovers torn apart. A painting that unites them all. When Jozef is commissioned to paint a portrait of the younger daughter of Krakow's grand Oderfeldt family, it is only his desperate need for money that drives him to accept. He has no wish to indulge a pampered child-princess or her haughty, condescending parents - and almost doesn't notice Alicia's bookish older sister, Karolina. But when he is ushered by a servant into their house on Krakow's fashionable Bernadynska street in the winter of 1937, he has no inkling of the way his life will become entangled with the Oderfelt's. Or of the impact that the German invasion will have upon them all. As Poland is engulfed by war, and Jozef's painting is caught up in the tides of history, Alicia, Karolina and their parents are forced to flee - their Jewish identity transformed into something dangerous, and their comfortable lives overturned ... Spanning countries and decades The Light at the End of the Day is a heart-breaking novel of exile, survival and how we remember what is lost When Jozef is commissioned to paint a portrait of the younger daughter of Kraków's grand Oderfeldt family, it is only his desperate need for money that drives him to accept. He has no wish to indulge a pampered child-princess or her haughty, condescending parents - and almost doesn't notice Alicia's bookish older sister, Karolina. But when he is ushered by a servant into their house on Kraków's fashionable Bernady ska street in the winter of 1937, he has no inkling of the way his life will become entangled with the Oderfeldts'. Or of the impact that the German invasion will have upon them all. As Poland is engulfed by war, and Jozef's painting is caught up in the tides of history, Alicia, Karolina and their parents are forced to flee - their Jewish identity transformed into something dangerous, and their comfortable lives overturned. Spanning countries and decades The Light at the End of the Day is a heart-breaking novel of exile, survival and how we remember what is lost A rich, moving, sweeping novel about a family forced to escape Krakow during the Holocaust When Alicia and her family are forced to flee Krakow to escape the Nazis, they leave behind all their possessions, including Alicias most prized object the portrait her father commissioned of her. As they move from country to country, desperate to find safety, their once luxurious life in Krakow seems like a memory of another world. But Alicia never forgets the painting and what it represents, and after the war, she resolves to find the artist and recover what is hers.