Walking with ghosts

the long version

During a walk to town, Elizabeth Welt Trahan allows the memories of her childhood to surface after more than a half century - first in short, disconnected snippets but then more and more insistently, until she is pulled back into the nightmarish world of Hitler's Vienna where, being Jewish, she barely survived. But this is also the story of the maturing process of a young girl during those shattering times. Despite an aloof and insensitive father, a circle of friends that is continually decimated by deportations, and the abrupt ending of a timid first love relationship, she is able to draw strength from the trivial and small pleasures of daily living.