image of person or book cover 6932900067781797350.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Mother Tongue single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Mother Tongue
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Joyce Kornblatt’s novel, Mother Tongue, begins with a shocking discovery.  In a powerful fiction that reads like a true story, the details of the crime and its aftermath unfold. 

'In mid-life, Australian fiction-writer Nella Pine learns that she was kidnapped as an infant from a hospital in the United States, taken to Australia and raised there by the woman she knew as her mother, but who was actually her abductor.  “When I was three days old, a nurse named Ruth Miller stole me from the obstetrics ward in Mercy Hospital and raised me as her own. This was May 7, 1968, in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania.”

'In four compelling voices, the mystery of Nella’s kidnapping—why was she taken?  how was the secret kept for so long?  who is the family from which she was stolen?—emerges.  

'Mother Tongue invites the reader to participate with these memorable characters as they unfold the impact on them of a terrible crime.  We learn how they have been scarred and strengthened. And we see how history—the Holocaust, Australian adoption policy, the flight of refugees to safety– continues to reverberate through the generations.'

Source: publisher's blurb

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Blackheath, Blue Mountains, Sydney, New South Wales,: Brandl and Schlesinger , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 6932900067781797350.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 166p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published October 2020.
      ISBN: 9780648523321, 9780648523345 (ebk)
    • Portland, Maine,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Publerati ,
      2022 .
      image of person or book cover 7873777160929926054.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 188p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 13 September 2022.
      ISBN: 9781735027319, 1735027316

Works about this Work

Ripples of Trauma : A Poetic Weaving of Voices Rose Lucas , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 45)

— Review of Mother Tongue Joyce Kornblatt , 2020 single work novel
Ripples of Trauma : A Poetic Weaving of Voices Rose Lucas , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 45)

— Review of Mother Tongue Joyce Kornblatt , 2020 single work novel
Last amended 8 Feb 2024 11:46:20
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