Floating in My Mother&39s Palm [Paperback]

Floating in My Mother's Palmis the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novelStones from the River.Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets Hanna see her hometown from a dwarf's extraordinary point of view. Although Ursula Hegi wroteFloating in My Mother's Palmfirst, it can be read as a sequel toStones from the River.White Lilacs

When my mother entered her tenth month of carrying me, I stopped moving inside her womb. She awoke that morning to a sense of absolute silence that startled her out of dreams filled with flute music and colorful birds, dreams she'd never had until she became pregnant with me, dreams she would have again when, two years later, she carried my brother.

When I imagine my mother that morning, I see her lying alone in the double bed with the birch headboard. I have tried to imagine my father in the room with her, but I can't see him -- only my mother who raises her nightgown and spreads both hands across her taut belly, waiting for me to move. On the window is a smudge where, just yesterday, she rested her forehead against the glass while gazing at the white lilac bush that grows behind the house. Nearly fourteen years later I will tear lilacs from that bush, wrap the stems in tissue paper, and carry them to the cemetery where I will drop them into my mother's open grave.

But this morning my mother's hands move across her abdomen as she tries to reassure herself of my life. All she feels is a cloak of fear that drapes itself around her. My mother waits. But her flesh does not stir against her palms. Sister Agathe will know, she thinks. She'll know what to do. The sister has taken care ofl“K