Our Jerusalem is a chronicle of an American family in the Holy Land and a unique account of the recent past in a city riven by conflict. Bertha Vester (1878-1968) saw life in Jerusalem intimately, first as a child growing up in the Old City and later as a leading figure in the community founded by her parents.

Her family had left Chicago in 1881 after a series of personal tragedies. Their story and that of the group who joined them in an arduous life in the Holy Land, illuminates a tumultuous period in which the author was often an active participant. She lived through the last days of Turkish rule, two World Wars, the British Mandate, the painful birth of Israel and the Six Day War. Among her acquaintances were “Chinese’ Gordon, Mark Twain, General Allenby, T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, to name but a few. Our Jerusalem recreates, in a personal document, the character of that eventful city.