By Cindy Mindell

It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Passover seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety.

As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere.

The Kurc family story is recounted in We Were the Lucky Ones, a just-published debut novel by Connecticut resident Georgia Hunter. She will discuss the book on Tuesday, March 7 at 2 p.m. at the Avon Library. The talk is co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford.

A native of Massachusetts, Hunter grew up in Providence, R.I. and was 15 when she first learned that she was a descendant of Holocaust survivors. Her new book is a fictionalized version of her family’s Holocaust experience.

“In 2000, a family reunion opened my eyes to the astounding war stories of my grandfather and his family,” she writes on her blog. “Eight years later, armed with a digital voice recorder and a Moleskine notebook, I set off to unearth and record my family’s story. I spent nearly a decade traversing the globe, interviewing family and digging up records from every possible source I could think of, eventually piecing together the bones of what would become my novel, We Were the Lucky Ones.”

Hunter traveled to England, Brazil, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy, searching through archives and interviewing family members. Two summers ago, she and husband Robert Farinholt visited her ancestral town of Radom, Poland, following her family’s trail to Krakow and Warsaw.

Why did it take so long to learn about her family’s Holocaust-era history?

“When my grandfather finally settled in the States in 1947, he made a decision as many survivors did to put his Holocaust history behind him,” Hunter says. “He’d seen what his Polish-Jewish heritage could have – should have, if left to probability – done for his family, and like many survivors, he opted to look ahead, rather than back. He took on a new name; he became an American citizen; he poured all of his energy into establishing a successful life and safe future for his children. I also think that growing up, I, like most kids, was far more consumed with friends and sports and school than with my ancestral past. I was close with my grandfather, but it never occurred to me to ask him about the life he led in his younger years; I simply loved him for who he was.”

Hunter kept a blog as her research unfolded, and created a list of ancestry search tips for readers seeking to uncover their own roots. “My family, by all accounts, shouldn’t have survived the Holocaust,” she writes. “The odds were against them. Their stories, I soon discovered, were too remarkable to be left untold.”

Through her research, Hunter got to know each of her relatives, “but I feel especially connected today to my grandfather, as I’ve come to understand just how present he still is in my life,” she says. “I think, gratefully, that I inherited some of his determination and optimism. I also feel a special connection to his older sister, Mila, whose daughter, Felicia, was a year old at the start of the war. My son was born in 2011, mid-way through this project, and it was then that I could identify not only with the role of being a mother, but also with Mila’s profound need to do everything and anything in her power, even if it meant taking great risks, to shield and protect her child.”

Hunter lives in Rowayton with her husband and son.

We Were the Lucky Ones with author Georgia Hunter, co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford: Tuesday, March 7, 2 p.m., Avon Library, 281 Country Club Road, Avon. For information: jhsgh.org.