A moving tale of betrayal, family, and belonging in the world
1960, Durban, South Africa: A Jewish father tells Jo-Anne, his ten-year-old daughter, "There'll be a bloody revolution here: revenge, massacres, a blood bath. Don't think of this place as home. We'll have to leave and find home someplace else."
His words leave her feeling frightened, uprooted, and longing for a place to call home. She loves and trusts her father more than anyone in the world until the unimaginable happens: He betrays her. He confides a secret to her husband who, during her divorce, uses the information to blackmail her family. Her father pressures her into paying the steep price, and she is left destitute. Her parents support her financially but constantly remind her that she is indebted to them.
She represses the betrayal and moves on with her life and career. Years later, she discovers the letter her father had written pressuring her to take the hit for the blackmail. Her confusion about her identity deepens. Seeking clarity, she reexamines her roots, a journey that leads her to explore her Jewish grandfathers who fled pogroms in Russia and Lithuania. How, she wonders, did their quests for home play out in her life? At last, she has an epiphany that leads her to find where she belongs.
Somewhere I Belong is a compelling work of auto-fiction with universal themes of love, betrayal, self-discovery, and finding home.
