Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

This is a book that highlights the long history across Europe and Asia of Jews being marginalized and in the extreme, forced to leave countries. This is a portrait of one family's displacement across four countries. The word Kantika means "song" in Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews—the book of the same name follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, who is a part of Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way—a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure, and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge—her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old. There are wins and loses at every step along the way, but the most memorable part is the resiliency of the characters even when adversity is the norm rather than the exception.