The story...is worthy of fiction with hairpin plot twists, daredevil acts of love and unexpected moments of humor in dark times.

Neumann shares the results of her meticulous research in a brilliantly heart-wrenching memoir.

The detail in the lengthy documents [Hans] left, especially dozens of pages about living and working behind enemy lines...is astonishing. This book will be an important addition to Holocaust literature.

... profound, gripping, and gut-wrenching.

Many writers have sought to address the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet while treading a familiar path, Neumann manages to bring an engaging perspective through the personal nature of her journey of discovery.

With determination and the help of translators, genealogists, historians, and family members, [Neumann] reconstructs her father’s astonishing story of survival.

In this elegantly structured debut, the author reconstructs with considerable literary finesse the life of her father, who owned 297 pocket watches—a unifying motif and organizing metaphor that readers may see as his metaphorical attempt to replace time stolen by Hitler. She also offers vivid images of Terezín (renamed Theresienstadt by the Nazis), where her grandparents were interned before they died in Auschwitz. Because Terezín was nominally a transit and labor camp rather than a death camp, prisoners could send and receive letters and packages, and the author includes poignant excerpts of some of the letters.

... a deeply moving account.