The Clean Daughter: A Cross-Continental Memoir - Hardcover

by Jill Kandel (Author)

When Jill Kandel married Johan, a man from the Netherlands, she never imagined the influence her father-in-law, Izaak, would hold over her life. Beneath his calm demeanor and clerical garb, Izaak carried the wounds of growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Childhood chaos led him to become a man who had all the answers. For everyone. Except himself. Izaak ended his own life--while still a healthy man--using legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands. The long tumultuous relationship between daughter-in-law and father-in-law was over. But Kandel couldn't move on. Ten years later, still exhausted by thoughts of Izaak, she returned to the Netherlands to search for understanding. The Clean Daughter is a story about building family across cultural, linguistic, and geographical divides. The complicated ways families both destroy and heal one another underpin Kandel's story of a family held together by tenacity, curiosity, and courage.

Author Biography

Memoirist Jill Kandel began writing at the age of forty, winning both the Autumn House Nonfiction Prize and the Sarton Women's Literary Award. Writing is her way of making sense of a life lived on four continents and a cross-cultural marriage that has lasted over forty years.