Cynthia Flash Hemphill

A Hug from Afar: One family’s dramatic journey through three continents to escape the Holocaust is a compelling story of perseverance, determination, love and grit that is brought to life. A historical narrative nonfiction memoir that journalist Cynthia Flash Hemphill has edited and compiled based on the letters written by her mother Clara Barki (aka Barkey) from 1930 to 1946.

The book goes far beyond one family’s story. It captures the history of the Sephardic Jews on the Island of Rhodes, descendants of Spanish Jews exiled during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The book “gives voice to a now-lost Jewish community on the verge of annihilation, to a Jewish family seeking asylum, and to one young woman who initiated a thread of correspondence with relatives in the United States that would ultimately solidify her family’s escape from the Nazis,” writes Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, University of Washington, in a detailed and compelling foreword to the book. “The story itself is not only captivating and powerful on its own, but is also of great historical and cultural significance,” Naar writes.

The book uses 16 years’ worth of letters and official documents to take the reader through a detailed journey of exile, community annihilation, dashed hopes, and real-life drama seen through the eyes of a young woman forced to grow up too quickly as she desperately worked to save her family from Hitler’s efforts to destroy the Jews. As she put this book together, Flash Hemphill reflected on the many themes it offers. “It touches on the Holocaust and includes two surviving and aging family members who are still alive and well today,” she said. “It centers on the topic of immigration, a hot subject today as our country debates this important issue. And it raises the question about how family histories will be preserved in the future, now that we have moved away from formal, hand-written letters to the instant and quickly discarded forms of today’s communication – e-mail, texts and tweets.”