Local author Dena Rueb Romero will talk about her new book All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss. This event is co-sponsored by the Hanover Historical Society and Howe Library.  This is a hybrid program.  There is no registration required for attending in person in the Mayer Room; register for Zoom here.

After her father's death, Dena Rueb Romero accidentally discovered a box of letters at her parents' home. The letters dated back to 1938. There were love letters between her parents, letters from her grandparents in Germany to her father, copies of his replies, and more, all of which illuminated for Dena her parents’ lives during the war and filled in gaps of information that had haunted her childhood. In this unforgettable memoir, she shares their story.

Emil Rueb was the son of a successful German Jewish realtor and businessman; Deta was a well-regarded children’s nurse from a large Lutheran family. After the Nazis came to power, the Nuremberg Laws made relationships between Jews and “Aryans” illegal; to stay together, their only hope was to emigrate. Deta soon left for a childcare job in England, but Emil lingered, hesitant to leave family and insecure about starting over as a professional photographer. When he did get out, landing first in New York before securing a position in Hanover, New Hampshire, his main focus was to be financially stable enough to reunite with Deta and to bring his parents, sister, and brother-in-law to America.

Romero uses both family documents and historical research to flesh out her parents’ moving story: their abiding love across years of separation, the growing hostilities toward the German Jewish population, her grandparents’ increasing desperation, and Emil’s hard work to help them all. ALL FOR YOU is a beautiful testament to love, a deeply moving tribute to lost family, and a compassionate recounting of this period of her father’s life.

Dena Rueb Romero grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire, the daughter of a Lutheran mother and a Jewish father, both refugees from Nazi Germany. She graduated from Brandeis University and received an MA in English from the University of Virginia and an MSW from Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. Her previous publications include Gretel’s Albums, a collaborative bilingual internet project with researcher Bernhild Voegel (www.birdstage.net/kleeblatt), and an essay about German citizenship in A Place They Called Home: Reclaiming Citizenship, Stories of a New Jewish Return to Germany. All for You is her first full-length book. Dena still lives in Hanover, where she sings in a women’s chorus and volunteers at a daycare center as well as with an organization supporting refugees and asylum seekers.