Wretched

It begins when Nelle finds two cloth Stars of David in a basement clay canister hidden by her Grandmother, like an Urn. Next, her Grandmother reveals two letters a Jewish man had sent her from an internment camp during the war. The old woman either worked for the underground in Brussels or she was in love. An emotive tapestry featuring salt of the earth characters caught up in crises and with a cross genre appeal, Wretched is a family saga with a strong romantic theme featuring multi-generation stories. Nelle tells the story of intergenerational trauma and the hardships the women of her family have faced to her unborn child throughout the various stages of her pregnancy. The reader enters into the historic and tumultuous life of Nelle's Grandmother, a name-changer, Amélie then Sophie Cyncad. A woman entrapped by Occupied Brussels, she flees to Canada and finds herself in an isolated and rural village. She faces the struggle of assimilation alone and works through the repercussions of the Second World War amongst the alienation and familiarity of a wild shield.