The Clean Daughter :
A Cross-Continental Memoir
* Library of Congress*
Great Reads Book 2025
HARDBACK. 341 Pages. NDSU Press. 2022.
The Star Tribune calls The Clean Daughter “Luminous” and “Complicated”
Deb Marquart calls it “Masterfully Written,” “Rich and complex.”
Rain Taxi Book Reviews “An intriguing spin on the memoir genre.”
Dr Jessie Voigts says, “The Clean Daughter is hands down, the best memoir and intercultural book I’ve ever read!”
The National Association of Memoir Writers calls The Clean Daughter, “Brilliant and deeply moving.”
Collegeville Institute says, “Kandel’s warmth and keen insights make this memoir unforgettable.”
Watch the five Minute interview.
Talking my Great Reads Award and writing The Clean Daughter
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What People are saying!
“The Clean Daughter is a masterfully written story of an unusual life. I was completely swept up in the events of this elegant memoir.”
~ Deb Marquart, author of The Horizontal World.
“The Clean Daughter is astonishingly beautiful. I end the book changed. My heart bigger, my eyes wider. I am better because of it.”
~ Leslie Leyland Fields, author of Surviving the Island of Grace.
Jill’s Prairie Public Interview with Bill Thomas
Synopsis
“When Jill Kandel married Johan, a man from the Netherlands, she never imagined the influence her father-in-law, Izaak, would hold over her life. Beneath his calm demeanor and clerical garb, Izaak carried the wounds of growing up in Nazi- Occupied Holland. Childhood chaos led him to become a man who had all the answers.
For everyone. Except himself.
Izaak decided to end his life - while still a primarily healthy man - using legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands. The long tumultuous relationship between daughter-in-law and father-in-law was over. But Kandel couldn’t move on. Ten years later, still exhausted by thoughts of Izaak, she returned to the Netherlands searching for understanding.
The Clean Daughter is a story about building family across cultural, linguistic, and geographical divides. The complicated ways families both destroy and heal one another underpin Kandel’s story of a family held together by tenacity, curiosity, and courage.”
Two people, four continents, forty years!
The Clean Daughter :
A Cross-Continental Memoir
NDSU Press, April 2022