Just Enough to Start Over

254-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882089Publication Date: 12/2/2025 (available for preorder)“A deeply moving novel with so much soul on display that one can only rejoice.”—Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and Borges and MeA pianist, an artist, and a poet, the three Dubrovsky sisters have grown up in comfort in Mannheim, Germany. As the threat of the Nazi party looms ever larger, the family packs their lives into two crates and flees to China. Just Enough to Start Over follows their experiences as refugees in Shanghai (and London, and Toronto); their crash-landing with a cousin in New York; the slow effort to build a life in a new country; and, later, the struggle of the family’s American daughter to find her own identity outside of their difficult history.  Echoing the Dubrovskys’ odyssey is the story of their three valuable paintings. First stolen, then transported through wartime Europe and the Soviet Union, these artworks and the lives they encounter on their jour