This is an amazing book — a substantial book in which the reader will find amazing revelations on any given page.

Brilliantly conceived as a Rashomon-type tale drawing from several people's memoirs, Sophie Freud's teenage diaries and poems, family letters, and the author's contemporary explanations and reflections, it tells the story of the Freuds, one of the most fascinating families of the 20th century. More specifically, it is the story of Esti (Ernestine) Drucker Freud, who married Martin, Sigmund and Martha Freud's son, and had two children with him before their bitter estrangement.

Growing up the eldest of three sisters in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in fin de siecle Vienna, Esti fell in love with Martin Freud and was determined to marry him. The lovely Esti ("Too beautiful for the Freuds," Sigmund would mutter after meeting her) was a glamorous woman of rare talents, energies, and passions whose life was both ruined and saved by her marriage. But her famous father-in-law was prescient; he realized Esti would ill suit her son as a helpmate.

Her parents, too, questioned the match. They had hoped for a more moneyed marriage for their daughter. The father of psychoanalysis had yet to achieve worldwide recognition and the riches that went with it. Esti's father considered Sigmund Freud just another psychiatrist, not to mention a "pornographer." Martin, who had earned a law degree, showed little promise as an earner.

Under normal circumstances, this would have prevented the young couple's marriage. However, parental approval was not as crucial as it had been prior to World War I, and Esti had inherited money from her grandfather, a wealthy coal merchant who had built the Paz synagogue. So there was enough to help Esti win the man of her dreams. Esti did have the good sense to understand she would not be able to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle; so she prepared to make a career for herself.

Leveraging off her natural abilities and social network, Esti soon became a voice coach (among her students: actress Hedy Lamarr). Eventually, she would earn a PhD and work many years at hospitals in New York and for the Veterans Administration in Newark.

This book is far more than the story of a failed marriage and dysfunctional family. It is also a story of success born of courage, talent, resilience, and determination — with an added dose of good fortune. Esti and Martin's children, Walter and Sophie, made rewarding careers and chose temperate and supportive spouses. The book not only allows us a glimpse into the household of the father of psychoanalysis, it is a masterful coming-of-age-in-a-time-of-turmoil story. It is also a history because the family's personal torments are described against the larger story of the unfolding Holocaust. The book contains a poignant description of the overwhelming problems and vagaries of life in flight from Hitler, even for well-connected persons with means.

As history, the book's inherent power comes from the fact that the descriptions are contemporaneous eyewitness accounts and reflections. In a poem composed for her mother's 45th birthday, Sophie expresses the desire to buy her mother an alarm clock that would ring out a clarion call to the world and awaken it to the unfolding terror.

The author of two books and numerous articles, Sophie Freud has written biography, not hagiography. She herself has edited, translated, and written connective materials to create what should become a classic. In many of her translated phrases, she captures the syntax and rhythm of the original language, and that is a great achievement. The portraits of her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even herself and her own children are hard-boiled and uncompromising. She embraces their humanity and her own in a refreshingly open way.

Does this book add to our understanding of the father of psychoanalysis, or psychoanalysis itself, a specialty whose merits Sophie questions? Only slightly. By the time Sophie was born, Sigmund Freud was already on the verge of the illness that would consume his life. Her parents' fractured marriage and the war-caused separation of the family did nothing to cement her bond with him or the other Freuds. Nevertheless, she fondly remembers her weekly visits to the Freud household in Vienna. As an adult, she reestablished a relationship with her father's family, including Freud's daughter, Anna. As someone who embraces life, Sophie is also grateful to bear the Freud name. Without it, she concedes, she probably would have become just another bit of smoke and ash spewed from the chimneys of Auschwitz.