Good readers make good writers. At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I fail to work on a story or submit something I’ve already written. In my critique group, sometimes we talk about workshopping a piece to death, and I’ve been guilty of doing that, too. A few weeks ago, a fellow writer told me the writing in one of my stories that takes place is Nashville was “fine,” but that I needed to make it more juicy.

“Juicy?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Just juicier. It’s hard to explain.”

Actually, I think I know what he meant and have been trying to spice the story up with stronger nouns and verbs and more vivid descriptions. But for today, I just want to share a review of a book I just finished, We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. It was well-written, jam-packed with historical information, and filled with well-developed characters who really lived–some still do.

But enough preliminaries. Here’s the review I placed on Amazon.

“Each time I read a book about the Holocaust, Jewish history, or a Jewish novel, I think, “That’s the best book I’ve ever read,” and for a week or so, it is. And then another one finds its way into my heart and mind. We Were the Lucky Ones did just that, and I think it’s going to stay with me for a long, long time.

“A family saga about two parents, Sol and Nechuma Kruc, and their children and grandchildren during WWI, the novel begins in Poland and takes the reader to many parts of the world, including Morocco and Brazil, and the forests, gulags, and ghettos, and mountains within. The couple’s five children are separated from their parents and each other for much of the novel, and there is suffering, anguish, hardship, fear, perseverance every day for each one of them. Through their experiences, the reader gets an up close and personal view of the horrors of the era as seen through the perspective of various family members.

“One of the five Kruc children, Addy, has a granddaughter, Georgia Hunter, who upon learning of the amazing history of her family and their experiences, embarks on years of extensive research to reveal this work of historical fiction based on true events. I knew this novel was going to be powerful when I read Hunter’s epigraph at the beginning: “By the end of the Holocaust, 90 percent of Poland’s three million Jews were annihilated; of the more than thirty thousand Jews who lived in Radom, fewer than three hundred.”

“Although I’ve read Night, The Hiding Place, Survival in Auschwitz, Anne Frank, Mila 18, The Hiding Place, and several Chaim Potok novels, this book really got to me and raised my consciousness to a higher level. I think it was because of the people, real people and their families, many of whom still live today.”

If it’s true that good readers make good writers, Georgia Hunter’s historical fiction surely added to my knowledge of how to improve my writing. Somehow she managed to write her family’s survival of the Holocaust and show the importance of perseverance, courage, hope, and a strong will to live.