Helmi's Shadow

“Horgan’s departure from overused views of Reno as “the sin city” and of Nevada in general as “the sin state” and his emphasis on the daily struggles of immigrants who manage to overcome hardships and prejudice to succeed in the Silver State place his book close to other remarkable memoirs on immigration in Nevada, such as Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land (1957) or Emma Sepúlveda-Pulvirenti’s From Border Crossings to Campaign Trail: Chronicle of a Latina in Politics (1998).”
—David Rio, Western American Literature

“An inherently astonishing, engaging, and informative blend of family history and memoir, Helmi's Shadow: A Journey of Survival From Russia to East Asia to the American West is an extraordinary and memorable account that is especially recommended for community, college, and university library Jewish Biography & 20th Century History collections.”
—Midwest Book Review

“While this book serves as a haunting memoir, it also quickly becomes a fascinating history of the conflicts between China and Japan, of life in Russia, and, of course, events in the Second World War. Horgan’s research is meticulous and enticing, with detailed maps and rare photos which deliver rich substance to his warm, inviting narrative.” —Billings Gazette

"Helmi’s Shadow is an absolute candy fix for politophiles and historophiles. . . . Quick, colorful chapters give the reader vivid pictures of harsh times of long ago." 
—New York Journal of Books

“More than the lyricism of Bogard’s prose and the beauty of Rogers’ photography, the book can be taken as a wakeup call to get out there and be alone with the night—if we can find one without the neighbor’s spotlights.”
—Youth Services Book Review

"Helmi's Shadow accomplishes that near-miracle of the best literature: It makes the world new. David Horgan has excavated the story of an amazing woman, his late mother, with such rigor and insight that her personal journey becomes a way for the reader to re-see 20th-century global convulsions, and experience them in an intimate and sensory way. This beautifully written, riveting account is a treasure and an illumination."
—Dierdre McNamer, author of Red Rover

“This is a story that might have been lost about a woman who might have been lost. It is the double account of a life lived through statelessness and war and of the detective work it took to retrieve that life. David Horgan skillfully weaves together a family saga that runs from the Pale of Settlement to Reno, Nevada, and an account of his own journey back from Reno to Russia, Shanghai, and Kobe, Japan. The elements of his story are at once the episodes that make up his mother’s life and a mini-history of the 20th century. Unraveling one life, Helmi’s Shadow finds a thread that takes it across half the globe.”
—Michael North, professor of English, UCLA,  author of Reading 1922 and Camera Works
 
"Helmi’s Shadow is a vivid family narrative that illuminates large historical issues, beginning with pogroms in Tsarist Russia, continuing with a series of exile experiences in China and Japan, and culminating in the simultaneously upraising and uprooting experience of immigrant life in post-World War II America. David Horgan has written a mighty book on a mighty theme."
—Richard Drake, Lucile Speer Research Chair in politics and history, University of Montana

"The story is gripping, and Horgan is an outstanding writer. Given that so much of the literature on Jews in Shanghai is devoted to the refugee community that arrived between 1937 to 1941, the history of the Russian Jews is still, for the large part, overlooked and unknown. Moreover, the depiction of the lives of two Russian Jews living in Kobe, Japan during the Second World War adds to our knowledge of Jews in Asia. I would recommend this book in a heartbeat."
—Kevin Ostoyich, professor of history, Valparaiso University