Shores Beyond Shores

From Holocaust to Hope

By: Irene Butter, John D. Bidwell - contributor, Kris Holloway - contributor

Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley

As her Pappi fights to save his family during the Holocaust, Irene's childhood is lost. Play is restricted. Family and friends disappear. Finally, with the Dutch police at their door comes the reality that Irene's father has not moved his family far enough from Hitler's Germany.

By January 1945, the family is struggling to survive a death camp. Irene tends her ailing parents, cares for starving kids, and even helps bring clothes to her Amsterdam neighbor Anne Frank, before her family is offered a singular chance for freedom...providing the Nazi doctor says they are healthy enough. After two weeks of heart-lifting miracles and heart-breaking tragedies, Irene arrives in the Algerian desert to journey into redemption and womanhood, without her parents or brother.

Irene's first-person memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, is an account of how the heart keeps its common humanity in the most inhumane and turbulent of times. Irene's hard-earned lessons are a timeless inspiration.

©2018 Irene Butter, John D. Bidwell, and Kris Holloway (P)2018 Tantor

How she went through so much but still managed to have a great life

Good book
Really liked how in-depth the book was but also very sad but had a really strong meaning

If you can get past the narrator voices

It’s a great memoir! I pushed thru and I’m glad I did. The atrocities the Nazis did to the Jewish people and many others is unfathomable. I’m happy that Irene survived and spoke on her survival and wrote this memoir. It’s detailed and much needed in this world. To remind us! Things like this did and can happen! Let us never forget!

Highly recommended

I’ve read and listened to many stories of the holocaust and each one always leaves me with a feeling of why does the world not know more of this. We need to know. Thankful for those who survived and tell their story.

Audio narrator ruins yet another book

Horrible audio narrator. She narrates Irene like a 3-yr-old with a high squeaky voice (all the way through, even when she's a teenager) and her brother Werner like Scooby Do.

As for the book, I didn't realize it was middle-grade or maybe even younger. For that, 4 stars. For an adult, it was just ok. Aside from the awful narration, Irene is 5 when the book starts and seems to be written at that age until she's 12. It was a bit jarring. Having read many Holocaust memoirs, this is unusual for a tween to seem like a little kid, considering the circumstances. Even when she's a teen, she seems more like she's 10. So I chalk this up to it maybe being written for younger readers.

The narrator drove me crazy.

After reading Monique and the Mango Rains, I wanted more, but sorely disappointed. I've read many stories about the holocaust and have friends whose relatives have died there or survived.
I could not stand the little girl voice in this narration. Nope, not gonna finish it.