Interview with Sharon Kurtzman, Local Author

Sharon Kurtzman always knew that she wanted to write a story inspired by her family’s experiences as Holocaust survivors and post-war refugees. The result is Kurtzman’s debut novel, The Lost Baker of Vienna, which was released this week. We spoke with the North Raleigh writer about what inspired her to write her novel and why it is resonating with people today.

Q: Where are you from? What brought you to Raleigh?

A: I grew up in Springfield, NJ. My husband and I lived in West New York, NJ when we first got married and moved to Marlboro, NJ just before we had our first child. We were there for about a year when my husband got a great job opportunity in North Carolina. That brought us to Raleigh when my daughter was one, and we’ve been here 30 years.

Q:  What is your educational and professional background?

A: I went to the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. I was a screenwriting major, and after graduation I worked in television marketing. I interned at MTV and worked at several different companies, including one where I met my husband on the company softball team. I became a stay-at-home mom when I had my first child.

Q: When did you first become interested in novel writing?

A: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five. When my second child was two years old, I hadn’t been writing for about five years and the urge was super strong. My mom had passed away, and I always knew I wanted to write about her experiences during the war. Her passing is what inspired me to start writing a book. The Lost Baker of Vienna is my debut novel, but I wrote five completed manuscripts before it. It’s been a 25-year journey.

In 2019, I received my Master’s in Fiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. While in the program, I studied from home with a faculty mentor and went to campus for ten days twice a year for full writing residencies. One of those residencies took place in Slovenia during the summer of 2018. It was a remarkable experience. I was there for two weeks with other students and faculty. My husband came and met me so that we could travel around Europe, and the first place we went was Vienna. I wasn’t writing this book yet, but I knew that my family had been refugees in Vienna trying desperately to get to family in the United States. We went to Vienna for research, even though it would be another two years before I began writing.

Q:  What was your relationship to Jewish history and culture growing up?

A: We were a Jewish family. My parents were pretty observant, especially my mom. I grew up in an Orthodox synagogue and we went to Shabbat services and celebrated the holidays. As I got older, I realized I could decide my own relationship with Judaism and religion. Before my family and I moved here, I decided to keep a kosher home. We had two sets of dishes, and there were five kosher butchers in our area of New Jersey. It was pretty easy to keep kosher there. One of the first things we did when arriving in Raleigh was join Beth Meyer Synagogue, where we are still members. I wanted that spiritual Jewish place that felt like home.

Q:  What inspired you to write this novel?

A: I always knew my mom was a Holocaust survivor. There was never an “a-ha moment” where I realized this. I have a photograph of my mom at four years old that sat in our den, and I knew the only reason we had it was because it had been sent to relatives in the U.S. before the war. In elementary school we started learning about Anne Frank, and I knew that my mother had a similar experience.

My mom didn’t talk about it much, so we had to connect the dots based on our family’s migration story. There was a lot I didn’t know. In college, I decided that I was going to interview my mom for a paper for a Jewish Studies class. We talked for hours, and it was the first time my mom really opened up to me about her experiences. Even though I had a general idea of what she went through, this was the first time I learned about the Vilna ghetto, the details of her family hiding after the ghetto was liquidated, and that they were captured. She told me how my grandfather was killed, the conditions of the concentration camp, and how they were stuck in Vienna for two years.

It was my grandmother’s mission to get everyone to my grandfather’s remaining family in the U.S. She went to the American consulate every day as she attempted to make contact with the family. My grandmother even encouraged my mom and aunt to date, because as she put it, “We are three women alone in this city and we need protection.” That stuck with me; even after the war they were still in danger as refugees. This novel focuses on the refugee experience in Vienna during that time.

Q: How is your family reacting to the novel’s release?

A: My mom, aunt, and grandmother have passed away. Thankfully, my immediate family and cousins are incredibly supportive. I sent finished copies to them, and they sent me the most beautiful text messages after reading the book. It’s very fulfilling. They know I wrote this book to honor my family’s experiences and resilience. We are in awe of their strength. They were able to build their lives back, move forward, fall in love, and have children.

The main character, Chana, is inspired by my mother, aunt, and grandmother—the strongest women I have ever known—and I’ve taken their strength and poured it into her. Many of Chana’s stories are informed by my family’s stories. The rest is filled out with research.

Q: Why do you think this message is so important right now?

A: I didn’t write the book to the moment. I always knew I would write about these experiences, but I struggled over whether to write fiction or nonfiction. I needed to be emotionally ready to write the book, and be a strong writer and researcher as well. I got sick with COVID in March 2020 and it took me time to recover. When I was sick, I realized I had to write this book now. If something happened to me, I couldn’t let these family stories die with them.

The book is about how war affects families for generations. It’s also about hope. This is, sadly, speaking to the moment as antisemitism is on the rise. It’s interesting to me that people have told me how much my book is needed now. I want people to take away the message that in the end, love will win.

Q: What advice do you have for people who are interested in writing their family’s stories for an audience?

A: If you want to write a fictional version, which is what I did, research the locations where your family lived. Look at the place and what happened there. That’s a great place to learn what was happening at the time. Then you can research what life was like during and before the war. Was the family in a ghetto? A concentration camp? What happened after? That will provide a vast amount of information about what life was like for your relatives.

Even when I wasn’t ready to write, I was doing research. Once I was ready to write, I was able to complete the first draft quickly because I had all that research done. Most of the book takes place after the war, and this is a time that’s rarely seen in historical fiction.

One final piece of advice I have is that if you are writing from a fictional point of view, remind yourself that this is fiction. It’s OK to let go of certain moments because you are writing a fictional story.

Q: Is there anything else you want readers to understand about your book?

A: I am a former food writer and covered the Triangle restaurant scene for IndyWeek for a couple of years. The present-day character in the novel, Zoe, visits Vienna as a food writer in 2018. I include the details about baking techniques because researching that for the book brought me so much joy, and it added so much light to the novel, providing balance with the darker elements of the story.

The Lost Baker of Vienna by Sharon Kurtzman is available for purchase at Quail Ridge Books, Amazon, or wherever you prefer to buy your books. Join us for a reception and author talk with Kurtzman on Tuesday, September 16 at Beth Meyer Synagogue. To register, click here.