Books

The Yellow Toothbrush: A Memoir of Trauma and Mercy

Outstanding Achievement
WI Library Association 2023

Published: 9/8/2022

Eight years ago writer, mom, and oma Kathryn Gahl found herself on a train she didn’t want to be on, with a ticket she didn’t buy. The Yellow Toothbrush is her journey of mercy. From her daughter’s father’s mother, pregnant in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, to falling in love with her daughter’s father in Greenwich Village in the 70s, to raising her daughter in a farmhouse with a garden in Wisconsin, to visiting her daughter in prison and what happens after that, Gahl connects the dots of trauma and shows us over and over again the light of love and not giving up.

Praise for The Yellow Toothbrush: A Memoir of Trauma and Mercy

Outstanding Achievement Award 2023: Wisconsin Library Association