And, as Lea enjoyed repeatedly pointing out in her later years, if she managed to escape from Hitler, she should be able to do whatever she pleased. Time and time again, it is Lea's finely tuned survival instincts and fierce determination to protect her family that saves them from ruin. She quite literally bullied her family out of Belgium and into France, where her quick wits saved them from being sent right back into Belgium again. But unlike many who chose to stay and ride out the storm, Lea instantly recognized the danger to her family on that fateful day in 1940. They went about their daily lives, paying little mind to German rhetoric because it simply didn't seem important then. Lea and her family were like so many others in Europe during that time.

Lazega does a remarkable job of conveying the way things were in the early 1900s, but it is the sudden rise of Nazi militarism that the author captures particularly adeptly.

By 1940, when the Nazis invaded Belgium, Lea was married with two children. But Lea wasn't content to simply watch life pass her by, and so she struck out on her own to build a new life in Brussels. Still a child herself, she became a nanny to help her mother make ends meet. However, fortunes did not improve for the family, and by the time Lea was 12 years old, her father and two siblings had scattered, leaving her alone with her mother, Esther. Lea, the youngest of three, was born not long after the family reintegrated into small town Polish society.

Lea's parents went to the American West in hopes of making their fortunes, yet quickly decided that they might have actually been better off staying in Poland. The time-tested tale of immigrants seeking a better life in America is given new life in Lazega's humorous memoir of his Bubbie, Lea. And sometimes – just sometimes – I, I wonder which of us is tugging them.' It's like working a puppet with a thousand strings.

Managing bubbie by russel lazega