Nothing More to Lose

Nothing More to Lose is an intense, hair-raising, and hopeful account of one family's resilience and faith. With poems based on Therese Kolbert Dieringer's autobiography (My Life - Lived and Remembered: A journey across Hungary, Germany, and America), Carolyn Martin tracks the Kolbert family as they escape from Hungary in 1944, endure seven years of starvation and sickness in Germany, and arrive to a new life in America in 1952. Refugees who know neither the language nor landscape, they finally find some semblance of peace in their new home.




Martin knows her subject well. Dieringer is a family friend whose autobiography she edited in 2008. This intimate connection flows through powerful free verse poems that are filled with immediacy, insight, and compassion. Nothing More to Lose will open readers' hearts and minds to the challenges that refugees in every era experience. It will also affirm the power poetry has to bear witness to that suffering and to the strength lying deep within the human spirit.




"Thomas Merton wrote, 'We have all stood in front of that special image that sang to our soul.' Were he alive today and asked for an example, he would hand the person this chapbook." -Wayne-Daniel Berard, author of The Realm of Blessing




"In Nothing More to Lose, Carolyn Martin has read and written my soul." -Therese Kolbert Dieringer




"Dieringer's voice comes through each of Martin's poems showing how kindness and cruelty co-exist in us all, and how true strength and resilience cannot be extinguished. Most importantly, kindness wins." -Kathleen Cassen Mickelson, cofounder of Gyroscope Review