IN THE MOTHERLAND

A DAUGHTER'S QUEST TO FIND HER MOTHER'S VANISHED WORLD

Author: By Ellen Clegg, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 14, 1997

Page: H1

Section: Books

After her mother's death in 1989, however, Epstein realized that there were gaps in those stories of fashion, art, and culture in prewar Prague. ``This dearth of a tangible past -- people, objects, a physical context -- with which I had grown up and to which I had become accustomed was made suddenly intolerable by my mother's death.''

Encouraged by the new openness brought about by Czechoslovakia's ``Velvet Revolution,'' when communism gave way to a more democratic form of government, Epstein began writing letters of inquiry, searching for records that would provide a tangible link to the past of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She set out on her own mission of joinery and juncture.

What emerges is a story with range and scholarship, a book that accomplishes the demanding task of memoir: to use the poignance of personal narrative to convey less accessible themes. Epstein, author of ``Children of the Holocaust'' and ``Joe Papp: An American Life,'' enlivens the dry motes of history with vivid images: the spires and vistas of Prague, the birdsong and tidy haystacks of the Czech countryside, the intimacies of her grandmother's fashion salon. She traces the migration of her family from the hill town of Brtnice to Vienna, Prague -- and to the deportation camp of Terezin and the horrors of Auschwitz. Because so much of her family story branches from the matrilineal line, Epstein offers a rare look at women's lives and finds that issues like child care and economic security were as bedeviling in 1898 as they will be in 1998.

Epstein begins by examining the world of her great-grandmother, Therese, and Brtnice, a hotbed of Czech nationalism. The melange of nationalities was typical of the Czech lands -- the Italian aristocrats, German administrators, Christian Czech peasants, and Jews. Here, Epstein feels deeply connected to her research. Her discovery of a crumbling graveyard, and two tombstones marked with the family name, brings a rush of clarity. ``I stood rooted in place,'' she writes, ``a weight lifted from my head, my blood at rest.''

Epstein traces her great-grandmother's move to the city of Iglau, where she worked as a seamstress. Then, in 1868, a family pattern began. Therese used her craft to make her way in the world, as would her grandmother and mother. Epstein finds records that show the arrival of Therese and her husband and children in Vienna in 1879. She would die there in 1890, a suicide, orphaning her daughter Pepi -- Epstein's grandmother.

Pepi apprenticed in the ateliers of Vienna, then moved to Prague and established a fashionable salon. She married a maverick engineer who had converted to Catholicism because he saw baptism as ``the ticket to European culture.'' Her business flourished. Their daughter, Franci, was to grow up Czech, first and foremost. She was christened and enrolled in a French school. And she began learning her mother's craft in the salon.

The final section of the book documents the monumental fractures in Czech society under Hitler's occupation. Hitler's army entered Prague in 1939, and Franci and her family knew life would never be the same. Jews were barred from economic activity and prohibited from entering restaurants, theaters, and hospitals. The salon was transferred to a non-Jewish worker. Franci's illusion of entitlement as a secular Czech citizen melted away. ``It was outrageous. Here she was forced to defer to a former employee and subjected to innumerable indignities because her grandparents happened to have been Jews by race.''

Here, Epstein's story grows urgent and compelling. The reader feels every bump and lurch along the way on Franci's transport to Terezin, not through gray fog ``but through fields freshly ploughed under and piled with yellow haystacks and newly dug potatoes.'' There, she is separated forever from her mother and father -- they would be murdered, she would be deported to Auschwitz. Although Franci survived the death camp, Epstein notes the terrible cost. ``Beneath her outer layer of feminine well-put-togetherness, Frances saw herself as a soldier. She had forged that persona in camp, held on to it in the difficult postwar years that followed, and arrived in America disciplined, authoritarian, and rarely carefree. Her soldier persona froze out emotion and focused on the next task at hand.''

Striving to educate American readers about the uneasy mix of German and Czech culture, Epstein's narrative sometimes falters. Her asides on Czech mythology, and excerpts from the work of journalists and writers of the time, add context but make for sluggish going at times.

Epstein herself plays an effective role in the book, bringing a postmodern eye and American forthrightness to matters at hand. When, in the course of her research, she arrives in Vienna, she feels a decided chill. ``Long before I knew anything about Therese or Vienna, when I traveled through it as a student, the city had felt to me like a giant mausoleum. Now, after reading volume after volume of Austrian Jewish history, I knew how deadly it had been for Jews.''

Epstein leaves a central question hanging: How did this search affect her own identity? What is her place in this line of women? In 1996, Epstein visited Therese's grave in Vienna's Central Cemetery, carrying a pot of purple heather and a trowel. Whether it takes root is another story.