“Evil does not always triumph. But evil does have a long reach.” For Audrey Hyams Romoff, the Holocaust is not just an unfathomable tragedy, but an incredibly personal one; a horror from which her grandmother and mother physically escaped, but carried with them across continents and decades. In her searing memoir, The Ripple Eclipse: Turning the Tide of Inherited Trauma, Hyams Romoff lays bare the psychological scars passed on through four generations of women—from inside the harrowing walls of Auschwitz to glamorous red carpet events half a world away. This vulnerable work charts a fascinating life led by a woman who seems to have it all: a dazzling, high-flying job in PR, devoted friends, a loving husband, and two talented children. But behind the scenes, a painful family history and unaddressed traumas claw their way to the surface—ready to rip apart the author’s life forever. Casting a spotlight onto the past in an attempt to understand her present, Hyams Romoff explores her family’s impossible escape from 1940s Poland and their settlement in Montreal, which laid the groundwork for a turbulent childhood. The familiar, frantic beats of adolescence—popularity contests, body image issues, first kisses—are magnified tenfold by the author’s fraught relationship with her mother, which hangs like a thundercloud over every milestone. This is not a tale of tidy healing, but a fearless excavation of what it means to live, grieve, and keep moving forward. Love and loss bleed through every page of this deeply moving memoir. Sectioned into chapters that detail a life severed into the Before and After of losing her parents, this work expertly captures Hyams Romoff’s attempt to untangle the gnarled web of trauma and anxiety connected to the women in her family, particularly her mother. Fashioning her grief into a voice that is raw, empathetic, and always engaging, Romoff offers soulful explorations of her formative experiences and brutally honest reflections of the people involved. Friends, ex-boyfriends, clients—no one is exempt from this author’s candid, witty chronicling, least of all herself. Armed with a sense of style to rival Carrie Bradshaw and a fierce determination to keep going at all costs, Hyams Romoff also addresses the stigmas surrounding “career women,” including pregnancy, and what it really means to “have it all.” Hyams Romoff writes with the precision of a publicist and the vulnerability of a survivor—each page both polished and painfully true. Despite the intimate confessions, this work denies a straightforward, romantic view of healing. This book is not a catharsis—for either Hyams Romoff or her readers—as she makes clear. Rather, it strips back a life of both significant privilege and immense pain, and the reality of grappling with the idea that this life was never meant to exist at all. As is one of the central motifs of Hyams Romoff’s memoir, recovery is continual—and for which no finish line or completion certificate exists. The result is a memoir that burns with honesty, but glimmers with hope. The Ripple Eclipse is a beautifully-crafted reflection on personal suffering under the shadow of a collective trauma passed down through generations. Above all, Hyams Romoff finds comfort in leading with empathy, and reminds us that empathy is its own form of survival—and that in weathering life’s storms, it is as much about who you ride the waves with as it is about finding your way to shore. —CANREADS BOOK REVIEW