“Bright One is a deeply affecting portrait of love and survival under impossible circumstances. Intimate, restrained, and emotionally powerful, it honors women’s resilience and the enduring bond between mother and child in history’s darkest hours.” - Philippa Gregory, Author of The White Queen and The Other Boleyn Girl

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Bright One is a powerful and deeply moving historical novel that brings to light a rarely told perspective of World War II—a story not from inside the concentration camps, but from the outside, where desperate choices meant the difference between life and death.

Inspired by true events, this emotionally rich narrative follows Jetti Finkelthal, a Jewish mother in Czernowitz, Romania, who makes the unimaginable decision to send her young daughter, Bertha, into an arranged marriage to save her from the horrors of Nazi persecution.

Told through the lens of her great-granddaughter, Lisajoy Sachs, this novel draws from a trove of family letters, photographs, stories, and memories to create a vivid, character-driven story of survival, sacrifice, and enduring love. As Jetti grapples with the grief of separation and the weight of her decision, her daughter embarks on a journey of exile, fear, and eventual resilience—carrying with her a secret sewn into the seams of her dresses: hidden treasures, and her mother’s hope.

Bright One stands apart in its genre by offering a unique lens on the Holocaust era—one centered not on imprisonment, but on forced separation and escape. It explores the intergenerational impact of trauma and the profound strength of maternal love, illuminating how personal sacrifice can echo through generations. The story is steeped in historical authenticity, emotional depth, and intimate detail, drawing readers into a world where ordinary people are called to extraordinary courage.

For those drawn to stories that explore the legacy of love and survival through the eyes of women and families forever altered by war, Bright One is a testament to the unbreakable bond between mother and child—and the lengths to which one woman will go to protect the future of her bloodline.

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Book Two of the Bright One Series

​In 1933, as antisemitism spreads across Europe, fifteen year old Berta Finkelthal leaves Czernowitz with a new name. Abramovich.A name she never imagined would replace the one she was born into. Married to a man three times her age, she is forced to surrender childhood overnight, stepping into the role of wife before she has fully learned who she is. Marriage was meant to secure her future. Instead, it carries her across borders just as hostility toward Jews intensifies and the ground beneath her people begins to shift.What was meant to be a quick and safe departure becomes a desperate migration as anti Jewish persecution grows and escape routes narrow. By 1935, Berta and her husband Solomon are stranded in Istanbul, suspended between continents and consequence. Months pass in suffocating uncertainty. Promised departures collapse without explanation. Funds diminish. Friendships disappear into another ship’s wake. And within the confines of marriage, Berta begins to understand that protection does not always resemble love, and that survival may demand more maturity than she was ever meant to possess.When passage to Palestine is finally secured, relief does not come easily. She has learned how quickly certainty dissolves. Ahead lies open water and the fragile hope of safety. Behind her, a Europe turning its back on Jews and closing its doors. Between those two realities stands a young woman who must decide what parts of herself she is willing to sacrifice in order to endure.Set against the tightening grip of pre war Europe, this sweeping and intimate second installment of the Bright One series traces Berta’s forced coming of age amid exile, identity loss, and the quiet, often invisible costs of survival.