An Unfinished Portrait (ePub)

How does a mother become estranged from her daughter?

Miriam Frank was born in Barcelona on the cusp of the Spanish Civil War among the many young, non-conformist people congregating from all over Europe wanting to fight fascism and social injustice - George Orwell, Willy Brandt, and many others. Her mother Käte was a German communist who had a free liaison with Louis Frank, an anarchist, filmmaker and American counterintelligence spy. Her relaxed pregnancy in Robert Graves' peaceful Deià was soon replaced by a precipitous flight from Barcelona with her infant daughter and one suitcase to Vichy France, to Casablanca and onwards to a community in Mexico surrounding Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and other surrealists, artists, refugees and radicals.

By accident, Miriam learned after her mother's death that she had kept many photographs of the time. As they fled, her mother had held in her other hand a suitcase that contained the albums of her treasured bohemian life in Helgoland, Mallorca, Catalonia, dreams of being free from oppression, as well as snapshots of their early life. It was Miriam's daughter who had been bequeathed the albums and mentioned them. Seeing them for the first time, Miriam resolved to use their poignant images as a means of reconciliation. In this elegant book of journeys, she recreates her mother's life and seeks to address the question how they drifted so far apart after having been so close from birth; and to honour the mother who did everything to save her from a chilling fate.