Yarde Reviews & Book Promotion: What Remains is Hope (The Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga Book 2) by Bonnie Suchman

What Remains is Hope

(The Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga Book 2)

By Bonnie Suchman

Publication Date: October 2nd, 2025

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Pages: 360

Genre: Historical Fiction

Beginning in 1930s Germany and based on their real lives, four cousins as close as siblings—Bettina, Trudi, Gustav, and Gertrud—share the experiences of the young, including first loves, marriages, and children.

Bettina, the oldest, struggles to help her parents with their failing business. Trudi dresses in the latest fashions and tries to make everything look beautiful. Gustav is an artist at heart and hopes to one day open a tailoring shop. Gertrud, the youngest, is forced by her parents to keep secrets, but that doesn’t stop her from chasing boys. However, over their seemingly ordinary lives hangs one critical truth—they’re Jewish—putting them increasingly at risk.

When World War II breaks out, the four are still in Germany or German-occupied lands, unable or unwilling to leave. How will these cousins avoid the horrors of the Nazi regime, a regime that wants them dead? Will they be able to avoid the deportations and concentration camps that have claimed their fellow Jews? Danger is their constant companion, and it will take hope and more to survive.

Praise

"Readers will find this follow up to Suchman's prior novel, Stumbling Stones, both a heartbreaking reminder of the Holocaust's atrocities and a compelling tribute to a family's refusal to surrender to despair...Richly compelling Holocaust account, centered on the power of hope."

Booklife by Publishers Weekly

"Author Bonnie Suchman has a way of making every moment count with her characters in a narrative that feels powerfully real as she spins deeply personal stories against a sweeping and tragic backdrop of history. ..What Remains is Hope is historical fiction at its best, and I'd highly recommend it to fans of gripping fiction that's emotionally resonant and grounded in truth."

K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite

Excerpt

Frankfurt

November 1938

Gustav carefully navigated the streets to the shop. It was normally a five-minute walk, but broken glass was everywhere and Gustav needed to be careful. To complicate matters, Nazi brownshirts were still in the streets, looking to inflict more damage. Everywhere Gustav looked, there were broken windows and defaced storefronts. They lived in the East End of Frankfurt – often called the Jewish section – and the hoodlums knew where to focus their attention. Gustav had been awakened in the early morning hours by the sounds of yelling and glass breaking. Parting the curtain carefully in his apartment, Gustav could see the Nazi brownshirts carrying torches, randomly breaking windows. The family decided it was safer to remain inside and away from the windows and wait until the violence ended. By eleven a.m., things were quieter, and his stepfather announced he was leaving, walking out the front door without waiting for a response. His mother yelled to Gustav to get dressed and follow his papa, which he did.

As he reached the shop, Gustav could see his stepfather picking up trash in front of the building. The windows were all broken and large swastikas were painted across the front door. Someone had entered the store through the broken windows, since Gustav could see that most of the few remaining bolts of fabric were gone. Gustav went up to his stepfather and said, “Papa, there’s not much we can do right now, and it’s still not safe for Jews. Let’s go home.”

His stepfather stopped picking up trash but didn’t move. “We can go home, but I need to see one place first. I need to see the synagogue.”

“Okay, but let’s hurry.”

To reach their synagogue on Friedberger Anlage, they walked along the Zeil – the main shopping street in Frankfurt – and Gustav was shocked at the level of destruction. Windows were smashed, and swastikas were painted on the walls. Looters were running out of the stores through broken doors and windows. Gustav wanted to run home, but he knew it was important for his stepfather to see the synagogue. His stepfather had moved to Frankfurt from Poland after the Great War, part of an influx of Polish Jews looking for a better life. The Polish Jews settled in the East End and were welcomed to the Orthodox synagogue established years earlier by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in opposition to the movement of many German Jews to a more liberal religious practice. His stepfather was not particularly observant, but found a community with the members of the synagogue, mostly Polish Jews. He tried to go as often as possible to services, and Gustav had his bar mitzvah there. The synagogue was the largest in Frankfurt, and Gustav, as a child, would marvel at the numerous cloakroom attendants who would take the men’s hats and exchange them for the silk top hats worn for the Saturday morning service.

Gustav could smell something burning as they neared the synagogue. Once they turned the corner onto Friedberger Anlage, he saw the synagogue in flames. They walked as close as they could, but a large crowd had already gathered and included youths with large clubs. Every window had been broken. Worse, the Torahs and prayer books were in a pile in the street, and they watched in horror as a Nazi youth set them on fire. Gustav knew it wasn’t safe to remain there long, and nudged his stepfather to leave.

His stepfather ignored Gustav, and said softly, almost to himself, “Baruch Dayan Ha’emet.” The blessing one recited in the face of a terrible loss, usually a death, but a blessing that also expressed faith that God had an ultimate purpose for this terrible loss. Gustav could not bring himself to repeat the blessing. He just couldn’t imagine there was any purpose for the destruction of this beautiful synagogue. Instead, he put his arm around his stepfather’s shoulders and guided him away from the synagogue. As they walked away, they saw firemen spraying water on the neighboring buildings to prevent the fire from spreading but ignoring the burning synagogue. His stepfather turned to Gustav and said, “I will always remember this day, November 10th.”

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Bonnie Suchman

Bonnie Suchman has been a practicing attorney for forty years. Using her legal skills, she researched her husband's 250-year family history in Germany, publishing the award-winning, non-fiction book, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany, as a result.

Those compelling stories became Suchman's Heppenheimer Family Holocaust Saga. The first in the series, Stumbling Stones, was a Finalist for the 2024 Hawthorne Prize for Fiction, and recently, her family traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, to install stumbling stones for her husband's Great Aunt Alice and her husband Alfred, the real-life characters in the book. What Remains is Hope is the second novel in the saga.

In her free time, Bonnie is a runner and a golfer. She and her husband reside in Potomac, Maryland.

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