About Linda A. Broenniman

Linda grew up in Buffalo, New York. She is the middle child of seven, born to Hungarian physicians who survived World War II and started their new life in the US in 1949.

Linda graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in psychology and from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon with an MBA. Several years after graduation, she left mainstream corporate America to follow her path as an entrepreneur. She let her passion for uncovering hidden potential in unexpected places guide her. And she allowed that same passion to fuel the search for her hidden family.

Linda lives in Great Falls, Virginia with her husband of 28 years and their dog, Juno.

BOOKS

The Politzer Saga (2023)

Your biggest literary influences: 

For this book, I read many history books and Holocaust memoirs. The ones that stood out were: Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat; John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture; Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889; Tivadar Soros, Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary; Ernő Szép, The Smell of Humans: Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary; Daniel Mendelson, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Millio; and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, I Kiss Your Hands Many Times.

What readers will take away from your book:

What I want readers to take away is that learning about their ancestors is not only a worthwhile endeavor but a critically important one. It is not enough to live in the present. We all need to find our roots, where we came from, and understand what shaped us. It allows us to be grounded in our lives. And if people don’t want to talk, keep asking and asking until you get the answers you need.

There are other lessons within the stories in the book:

  • From the Politzer family’s experiences, readers will learn how antisemitism was woven into historical events throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly Hungary.
  • Readers will learn about Jewish assimilation in Hungary’s golden age.  Jews played a key role in Hungary’s development. But in many aspects, intense antisemitism remained.
  • Through family stories, the reader will get a rare glimpse into the brave and complicated lives of Hungarian women during the 19th and 20th centuries.

What is your ideal target audience?

Potential readers of The Politzer Saga include those who enjoy multicultural stories, European history (18th century – present) and family memoirs. Such readers prefer to learn history by experiencing it through the personal stories of real people. They compare and contrast their own life to the lives of historical characters and how they may have grappled with similar issues: the pandemic, conflict, antisemitism, economic stresses, among others. Potential readers most likely value intellectual challenge, growth and the belief that we can each do our small part to make the world a better place if we know and understand history.

A core subset of the target audience for The Politzer Saga are readers particularly interested in Jewish history — including but not limited to the Holocaust. High schools and universities could be another potential target audience —The Politzer Saga would be an excellent means for students to learn about Eastern European Jewish History from the 18th century to present. Other potential readers are genealogy enthusiasts and Hungarian-Americans interested in learning about their Hungarian heritage.

Visitors to the Politzer Saga Exhibition at the Rumbach Synagogue are another audience. The book will be offered at the Exhibit and at the nearby Hungarian Jewish Museum, part of the Dohány Synagogue complex in Budapest, Hungary.

If you had to describe your book as a cross between two well-known books, what would you say?

The book is part biography, part history, part memoir, but if I had to give an answer, it might be a cross between The Lost by Daniel Mendelson and The Warburgs by Ron Chernow.

Tell us about the protagonist in your book, and who would play her or him if they made a movie out of your book?

The book includes 13 stories of family members. Each story has its own protagonist. But for the overall book, I am the protagonist. I would love for someone like Meryl Streep or Helen Mirin to play me.