Lives Lived and Lost stands at the intersection of biography, autobiography, memory and history. It narrates a mother's and daughter's separate perspectives of their experiences before, during and after World War II. The book is also an ethnography of lives of women and children during a transformative period in Eastern Europe and opens a window to the crucial events of that epoch.

The challenge of the narratives provides the urgency of the story and the richness of the historical record. It is also an unforgettable story of love, loss and longing for family engulfed by war. The book will resonate with those interested in the lives of individual women and children, mothers and daughters, scholars, and students of history, World War II, gender, and religion, especially Hasidism, immigrants, and with mainstream readers in this and future generations unfamiliar with life during the first half of the twentieth century in Europe