THIS EXQUISITELY CRAFTED MEMOIR follows one woman's tumultuous journey from her childhood in communist Romania to her coming of age in the United States. Filled with anecdotes and incidents with family and friends in several countries on two continents, the book vividly re-creates the experiences of new immigrants to America -- especially the experience of the latest wave of newcomers from the former Socialist bloc.

Anca Vlasopolos writes movingly of the hyphenated, ambiguous identities assumed by displaced people; the purgatory in which immigrants await transfer to another country; the mysterious nostalgia for places and events dimly recalled. Throughout, she describes the constant search for a place truly to call home. Vlasopolos chronicles years of limbo in Brussels and Paris as well as her settlement in Detroit, Michigan, where she will never feel completely at home. Even the country of her birth, with its endemic anti-Semitism and xenophobia, does not serve as a home or even match the scenes of her nostalgic longing.

The true heroine of the story is Vlasopolos's mother, an Auschwitz survivor who raised young Anca herself after the death of her husband, a Greek political dissident. This extraordinary woman's spirit, sharp intelligence, sense of humor, and flair for fashioning the appearance of opulence in the face of poverty provide some of the most arresting moments in the book. The deep attachment and strong mutual support between mother and daughter come through clearly in Vlasopolos's moving tribute.

Vividly describing the smells and tastes of delicate pastries and salmon caviar and cagey exertions to hide rare indulgences from the authorities; her accidental discovery ofher Jewish identity and the euphemisms to cover the fact of her father's death; a meeting of the Communists' censorship committee and her difficulties in obtaining an American library card -- Vlasopolos has composed an extraordinary and profound addition to the literature of exile.

Anca Vlasopolos' poems are a battle cry-bracing, powerful and luminous. With spare eloquence, she evokes a world that's turned cruel and unforgiving. Her poetry is as distinct as her fingerprints. --Patricia Abbott, author of Monkey Justice and Other Stories Walking Toward Solstice captures a restless naturalist's and poet's eye that scans the landscape of Southeast Michigan, whether urban, suburban, or its patches of isolated wilderness, for the signs of life and struggle that often are bracing reminders of our own mortality. Vlasopolos has a relentless, fierce vision, without sentimentality: this book of intricately-wrought lyrics sharpens the soul and offers fortification for all readers as we each tread toward one solstice or another. -Caroline Maun, author of The Sleeping and Mosaic of Fire: The Work of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder and Kay Boyle

No traveler in the nineteenth century became a greater catalyst of change than Manjiro Nakahama, a man revered in Japan and virtually unknown in the U. S. The New Bedford Samurai began his adventures as a runaway, illiterate boy from an island nation locked tight against the world, ruled by a strict caste system, and by and large ignorant of six hundred years of progress. By the end of his life, Manjiro had circumnavigated the globe five times, saw (and helped) his country change from the feudal Shogunate to a nation committed to playing a major role in global affairs, and imported from the U. S. to his native land both an enthusiastic spirit of democracy and the entrepreneurial know-how that resulted in severe ecological damage. "A brilliant fusion of a nonfiction novel and an ecologically concerned memoir, Anca Vlasopolos' latest book, The New Bedford Samurai, takes the reader on multiple journeys. She takes us back through time, bringing to life the true saga of a nineteenth-century Japanese castaway, Manjiro Nakahama, and through space, taking us with her to Japan, where we learn of the plight of the short-tailed albatross. What's more, this creative, eloquent, and heartrending book makes us care." Susan Morgan, author of Place Matters: Gendered Geography in Victorian Women's Travel Writing about Southeast Asia.