Bernstein Saga
At the heart of the saga is an amber that Marthe finds in the Baltic Sea when she emigrates in 1890, and which is passed down from mother to daughter over five generations.
Tell our stories, remember the roots, rekindle the fire, encourage women and men,
to show what we have in common, to inspire life, to encourage love,
to remind us that life on earth can be paradise.
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TRUDE, AMBER, MEILIN - three of the five novels are published in German
ANNIE and MARTHE will follow the years to come
TRUDE will be translated and published in English and Spanish in 2025
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Five women, five generations, five universes
The Books
TRUDE 1908 - 1998
TRUDE grew up as the seventh child in a bare men's house in Estonia. As a young woman she blossomed alongside her lover Valentin. They started a family and moved to Leningrad. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the family seized the opportunity and emigrated to Darwin, where the father got a job as an engineer in a shipyard. Thanks to her Aboriginal friend Bakana, Trude survived the hail of bombs the Japanese dropped on Darwin in February 1942. She spent the war years with the children in the safety of the outback. After the war, Trude found normalcy in her work and in caring for her teenagers. Miraculously, a piece of amber found by Trude's mother on a Baltic beach reached Trude and was passed from mother to daughter as a symbolic woman's stone. Trude's children, Sergej, Philipp and Anne, grew up to start their own families. A particularly strong bond developed between her granddaughter Meilin and Trude. After Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin for a second time in 1974, Trude moved to Brisbane to live with Anne. In the latter part of her life she devoted herself to her love of books, running a second-hand bookshop. Towards the end of her life, Trude described herself as an ineradicable root. And rightly so! She never gave in and never lost her stubbornness. Anne's husband Malcolm used to roll his eyes at his eccentric mother-in-law. TRUDE (German) Volume I of the Bernstein Saga 1908-1998 Novel Hardcover, 480 pages, 2017 ISBN 978-3-931560-54-6 Sheema Medien Verlag 2017 www.sheema-verlag.de
AMBER 1986 - 2015
AMBER owes her name to her red hair and the amber her mother, Meilin, wore when she was born. The family stone was passed down from mother to daughter. ​ The parents, Swiss Walter and Australian Meilin, moved to Switzerland with the baby to try out the family thing. The Chernobyl reactor accident, Meilin's abyss, her capable grandmother Nelly and distant relatives Down Under shaped Amber's early childhood. At the age of twelve, Amber finally moved to the city of Zurich to live with her father. City life, Walter's awakened political sense and her teacher Niklaus Hug awakened Amber's interest in global and social connections. As a student of sociology, she acquired background knowledge and was outraged by the nuclear and war lobbies and unfair power structures. She dreamed of a global awakening of women for the benefit of all. With the support of her partner Frederik, she entered politics. After Fukushima, her activism caught the spirit of the times and she made a political breakthrough. At a Future Congress in Berlin, Amber finds new inspiration. However, an encounter with a person from the past proves to be her undoing. Through a moment of carelessness, she makes the headlines and learns the dark side of social media. She is hit by a wave of vicious hatred. But the main reason for leaving politics is the desire for a profound reorientation. The novel AMBER captures the spirit of the times and tells the story of a woman from Generation Y in Central Europe who is exploring and positioning herself in a highly complex society. Amber's life is interwoven with contemporary history, questions of ethics, why, where and how the global community is moving. The novel AMBER is the second volume of the Bernstein Saga and differs in language and style from the first volume, TRUDE. But in great-granddaughter Amber, Trude's sharp wit shines through unmistakably. AMBER (German) Volume II of the Bernstein Saga 1986 -2015 Novel Hardcover, 680 pages, 2018 ISBN 978-3-931560-67-6 Sheema Medien Verlag 2018 www.sheema-verlag.de
MEILIN 1961 - 2023
MEILIN - Grandmother Trude and a red dress that comes to her in a dream keep the girl warm throughout her childhood. At nineteen, she flees to Europe with Gérard, a backpacker. Her odyssey takes her to Morocco, Egypt and France, where she briefly finds a home in a commune and becomes pregnant. For the sake of her daughter, Amber, she follows the child's father, Walter, to Switzerland and realises that motherhood is not her cup of tea. Her mother-in-law Nelly's sewing machine and beautiful fabrics briefly jolt Meilin out of her funk. Torn between her need for freedom and her love for her daughter, she meanders through life. The turning point is a trip to the outback, where she meets the stranger in her life: herself. MEILIN (German) Volume III of the Amber Saga Novel, hardcover | 2022 672 pages, 33 € | CHF ISBN 978-3-948177-19-5