Leora Krygier

When She Sleeps
The Toby Press
November 2004

Years after the fall of Saigon, half-sisters Lucy and Mai find one another in the world of dreams. Mai is the Amerasian child of Aaron Freedman, a former U.S. Army surgeon and son of Jewish refugees, and a Vietnamese linguist, Linh. Although the surgeon had promised to leave his American wife and daughter for Linh and her infant, in the chaos of the American evacuation, they were left behind. Now both the girls are teenagers.

Bereft of a father, Mai lays claim to what she believes is rightfully hers–her mother's memories of the doctor, locked away in Linh's dreams. She steals them away, and "sends" them out into the night to her half-sister Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy finds a haven from her parents' secrets and the devastating loss of entire family in the Holocaust in her darkroom where she transforms photographs into dreamscapes. Gradually, telepathically, like an image slowly surfacing, Lucy finds herself mystically transported to the half-sister she's never met, dreaming of the lush landscape of her father's infidelity.

With prose as uncompromising and moving as that of Marguerite Duras or Faulkner, Leora Krygier's WHEN SHE SLEEPS (Toby Press, November 15, 2004, hdcv., $19.95) is vibrant with poetic sensuousness. As Mai journeys from Vietnam to Paris, and finally to LA, the city her mother Linh tried so desperately to reach, the physical divide between the sisters erodes on the path to a riveting finale.

Excerpt: The night we returned to Saigon, my mother, Linh, exacted the last promise I would ever make to her, my vow, never to call her "Mother" again. We’d just arrived in the city before dusk, Grandmother Thanh, Linh and I, hiding until twilight sank the last of the hot sun, then emerged with the others, all the ghosts from the countryside. Like them, we were homeless, carrying our kerosene stoves and torn mats on our backs, shadows looking for work and shelter in the city. We found a space on the bottom landing of a cracked stairwell, and made our beds there, on the concrete, still splintered with old shrapnel. I was almost asleep when Linh whispered to me and made me the accomplice in her crime.

"Every name is its own world, every word a journey," Linh began. "Promise me, Mai, swear it," she said, taking hold of my hands. "Give me your word you won’t call me mother, only Linh from now on."

I waited for my eyes to accustom to the dark and looked at her closely. Before the takeover, she’d been a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Saigon. She was a teacher of etymology, skilled at exhuming the origins of words, finding their buried secrets, and for her, a name was an entire history, a universe, not to be disturbed, never to be erased or forgotten.

Creative License by Valerie Takahama
Orange County Register

Critics Praise

"Her luminous prose transports the reader from the war-torn ruins of Ho Chi Minh City to the plastic suburbs of 1980's California, with periodic jaunts through Paris and flashbacks to the Holocaust...She pays off with a poignant epic." Newsweek.

"Krygier's clear prose brings close the drama of survival, the weight of it, 'of those left to sweep up what is left when war is done.'" Booklist

"This novel ... uses the dualities of light and dark, dreaming and waking, and East and West to remarkable ends. The horrors and disruption of war, never discussed directly, are instead made evident in the actions and interactions of the characters. A good literary look at the Vietnam War, this brings together the Vietnamese and the American perspective through the lens of divided families." Library Journal

" A lyrical gem of a novel, about dreams and like a dream. Krygier enchants and entraps the reader in a universe of entangled families and entangled emotions." Andrew Nagorski, author of "Last Stop Vienna," and senior editor Newsweek.

"Elegant ... Krygier portrays the tentative steps by which two young women discover and come to terms with their identities." Kirkus Reviews

"An engaging, lyrical, dreamlike duet between two complex young women, one a Californian, the other Vietnamese, whose lives are connected through love and history, and a single man, their mutual father. Their intricate, often dangerous relationships with their mothers, the women who shared him, are traced with fierce insight and quiet delicacy." Janet Fitch, Author of White Oleander.

"In When She Sleeps Krygier explores a number of ambitious subjects, from the emotional casualties of the Holocaust and the Vietnam War to the crushing pain of a marriage violated by infidelity. She addresses each subject with poetic eloquence. (It's) a book to be savored, and readers will find themselves discussing the issues it entails long after they've turned the last page." Cleveland Jewish News.

"Beautiful. Krygier has a perfect sense of place, relationships, and emotions. I was pulled in the lives of the two sisters, from the first page to last." Bob Stone, Author of "Confessions of a Civil Servant."

"Krygier has penned that rarest of literary jewels, imaginative literary fiction. "When She Sleeps" is truly the stuff dreams are made of." Carolyn Howard Johnson, Author of "This is the Place" and "Harkening."

"A gorgeous, engrossing novel. Krygier paints a dream landscape, weaving two cultures and creating one language." Adele Scheele, Ph.D., Author of "Career Strategies for Working Women."

"Leora Krygier is a talented author who brilliantly and seamlessly weaves together fantasy and reality. "When She Sleeps," a story of two half-sisters, products of war-torn Vietnam, is told with compassion, sensitivity and understanding." Naomi Rosenblatt, author of "Wrestling with Angels. What Genesis Teaches Us About Our Spiritual Identity, Sexuality and Personal Relationships."

E-mail Leora for discussion group questions.

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