Arona Henderson, a Canadian born author, attended McGill University and the University of British Columbia. She received her medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. After a forty-year career as a beloved family practitioner, Arona faced her own devastating illness. Out of her resolve to survive emerged a story about courage, a compelling tale of a young Jewish girl, Caasi Lichman, born in Montréal. Lilacs in the Snow chronicles Caasi’s passage from desolate childhood to impetuous adolescence to a shaken, yet solid adulthood, and is intertwined with the similarly volatile political, socio-economic, and racial climate of the mid-twentieth century.

The story begins when an adult Caasi returns to Montréal and visits her estranged father. The encounter rekindles fragments of her childhood chaos, and she takes the reader on a gripping journey through the world of her collected memories, which are illuminated by flashes of sensitivity, poignancy, budding sensuality, resilience, humor, and abiding love. The complexity of human relationships is portrayed with revealing conviction and secured at the point where truth and imagination collide. In Caasi’s display of moral fortitude, we find an example of human excellence that can be a source of inspiration to all readers and provide hope for better tomorrows. Long after the book is closed, your mind and heart will linger in its powerful hold.