Possible interview topics: childhood, school memories, family life, friends and sibling stories, hobbies and talents, sports, music & books, community, work-life and career, wedding memories, raising children, trips and vacations, holidays, memorials, food traditions, native languages, religion, cultural celebrations, songs. First Steps in Genealogy: A Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Family Historyby Desmond Walls Allen (Betterway Books): From interviewing family members to searching the census, determining the reliability of sources to documenting findings and more, this book is a must-have for the beginner. I do think the novel took quite a slow pace from here onwards. Thought it still remained engaging. The gripping details of the incident that Sahil faced and the sprinkling of historical events such as Diana’s death really brought the novel to life. Organizing and Preserving Your Heirloom Documentsby Katherine Scott Sturdevant (Betterway Books): The easy-to-follow guidelines and ideas for preserving your family papers in this new book will help you begin creating a documentary volume. Photographs

The writer has successfully put in these small moments, which felt so realistic, between the tumultuous situations. Key elements: book title, foreword/introduction, table of contents, timeline or chronology, family tree diagram, narrative chapters (by individual name, family, or year), list of photos and images, maps, appendices, index). 5. Select photos and graphics Amjad is a British Muslim of Pakistani heritage, living in Northern England. The story opens in 1993 when Amjad’s wife has just died in childbirth, leaving him with a 10-year old son (Saahil) and a new-born daughter (Zahra). Just as Saahil finishes University, a cataclysmic event occurs which changes all of their lives forever and it is hard to see how they can ever recover from it. The book follows the ups and downs of the family’s fortunes over a 25 year period.Boxes or lines — When making boxes or drawing lines on charts that connect family lines, use a consistent style. The underlying tone of the novel is hauntingly bittersweet as Hussain delicately presents both sides of the minority experience. Her characters perfectly exemplify both the innumerable contributions of Pakistanis to British society, as well as the inevitable deficiencies that are born both out of traumatic life experiences and the struggle to navigate a foreign land. The paths the characters take in light of immense trauma are ones that are not entirely unsurprising. The multigenerational nature of the novel was markedly powerful in creating an intimate relationship between the reader and the characters. I sincerely felt as though their burdens and struggles were my own, and related to much of the narrative (hence the tears). Windows on the Past: Identifying, Dating, and Preserving Photographs by Diane VanSkiver Gagel (Heritage Books): Besides showing you how to care for your precious family photographs, Windows on the Past helps you date photographs through the use of illustrative examples and by analyzing your ancestors’ clothing and the photographer’s props. Writing and storytelling

Getting Started in Jewish Genealogyby Gary Mokotoff and Warren Blatt (Avotaynu): Discover techniques and resources you can use to make researching your Jewish ancestors easier. The book covers locating ancestral towns, Holocaust research and name changes. Polish, Czech and Slovak I adored the amount of little details in this book because it made me feel as if I were really there. "Zahra pursed her lips. She clipped and unclipped the buttons on her duvet, thinking" You could feel, hear and taste (i drank a lot of chai tea reading this) every moment, emotion and family meal! Grouping — Group narratives of key figures or other historical information at the front of the book followed by charts, or place biographies of key figures of each branch immediately before their corresponding descendant charts. Timeline — Create a photographic timeline — for example, using group shots from family reunions over successive years. Pair a wedding photo of a couple with a photo from their 50th anniversary. Years later, Saahil and his best friend, Ehsan, have finished university and are celebrating with friends. But when the night turns dangerous, its devastating effects will ripple through the years to come.The Family Tree German Genealogy Guide by James M. Beidler (Family Tree Books): Got Deutsch ancestors? This guide has you covered, with resources for identifying your German immigration ancestor, finding German records, understanding the German language and writing to German archives. And with brief guides to German geography, history, and administrative divisions, this book contains everything you’ll need to get started. A follow-up book by the same author, Trace Your German Roots Online, shares even more techniques for researching German ancestors online, and the same publisher has also produced similar books for Irish, Italian and Polish, Czech and Slovak ancestors. Overall, I think it’s great if you enjoy thrillers and if you are interested in a fast-paced read about how a DNA database could be crucial in a decades long ongoing case.

Mixbook: Among the 84 family-oriented design themes are memoir, cookbook, reunion and family history.A Beginner’s Guide to British Reference Works by Anne Wuehler (Heritage Quest): If you’re searching for ancestors of English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh descent, this book is a great resource. Beginners will learn how to start, what records to search and where to find information on British research. The Family Tree is an intergenerational story, centred around a British Pakistani family based in Bradford. The reader is thrust straight into the grief and struggle of Amjad, whose wife dies during childbirth leaving him to raise his 10 year old son, Sahil and newborn daughter, Zahra on his own. The story moves fairly rapidly from there as we witness both Sahil and Zahra grow, and the challenges each in this small family unit experiences, finally culminating in a tragedy that threatens to rupture the family apart entirely. ⁣ The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, 2nd edition revised, by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (Ancestry): Sets the standard by which all genealogists should pattern their work. U.S. Military Records: A Guide to Federal and State Sources, Colonial America to the Present by James C. Neagles (Ancestry): You probably have an ancestor who served in the colonial or US military in some capacity. This book tells you what records exist and how to access them. State records Undoubtedly this is a moving story, but you will experience pretty much every emotion reading this, from anger to elation, frustration to horror. It is a complete roller-coaster and I may have shed a tear once or twice... I will miss these characters enormously especially Zahra who is intelligent, tenacious, loving and resilient!