What Kirkus describes as a "masterful revelation about life and art imitating each other in maintenance and repair" in a starred review, Dwell Time is an illuminating debut memoir by one of the few prominent Latinas in the field of art and architectural conservation; a moving portrait of a Cuban Jewish family’s intergenerational trauma; and a story about repair and healing that will forever change how you see the objects and places we cherish and how we manage damage and loss. Dwell Time is a term that measures the amount of time something takes to happen – immigrants waiting at a border, human eyes on a website, the minutes people wait in an airport, and, in art conservation, the time it takes for a chemical to react with a material. Renowned art conservator Rosa Lowinger spent a difficult childhood in Miami among people whose losses in the Cuban revolution, and earlier by the decimation of family in the Holocaust, clouded all family life. After moving away to escape the “cloying exile’s nostalgia,” Lowinger discovered the unique field of art conservation, which led her to work in Tel Aviv, Philadelphia, Rome, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Charleston, Marfa, South Dakota, and Port-Au-Prince. Eventually returning to Havana for work, Lowinger suddenly finds herself embarking on a remarkable journey of family repair that begins, as it does in conservation, with an understanding of the origins of damage. Inspired by and structured similarly to Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table , this first memoir by a working art conservator is organized by chapters based on the materials Lowinger handles in her thriving private practice – Marble, Limestone, Bronze, Ceramics, Concrete, Silver, Wood, Mosaic, Paint, Aluminum, Terrazzo, Steel, Glass and Plastics. Lowinger offers insider accounts of conservation that form the backbone of her immigrant family’s story of healing that beautifully juxtaposes repair of the material with repair of the personal. Through Lowinger’s relentless clear-eyed efforts to be the best practitioner possible while squarely facing her fraught personal and work relationships, she comes to terms with her identity as Cuban and Jewish, American and Latinx. Dwell Time is an immigrant’s story seen through an entirely new lens, that which connects the material to the personal and helps us see what is possible when one opens one’s heart to another person’s wounds. From the book: “ How, I wondered, was it possible that no one in my family had ever told me that Havana, the place where we were from, was so closely aligned to my work? More importantly, how had I managed to reencounter this ornately decorated, sagging city at the precise moment when I was beginning to see a link between restoration of the material world and personal healing?” In this beautifully conceived memoir about generational trauma by a Jewish Cuban American art conservator, the author uses the materials she repairs in her work (marble, bronze, wood, etc.) as frames for excavating her family’s past…This technique prompts insightful reflection and offers a fresh take on how art can help us make sense of life. ― Booklist A guide to examining the Jewish past, understanding loss and appreciating the ways people and individuals can emerge stronger and sometimes more beautiful after decades of wear and tear. -- Andrew Silow-Carroll ― Jewish Telegraphic Agency From the coasts of Cuba to Israel’s Mediterranean shores, Lowinger, the author of Tropicana Nights , interweaves her life story with insights drawn from her career in art conservation and restoration. Fleeing rising antisemitic sentiment in Eastern Europe and landing somewhat accidentally in Cuba, the author’s family became immigrants twice over when they left their successful dry-goods stores and Fidel Castro’s communist autocracy for Miami. “We’d lost an island, but gained America,” she writes. “Refugees around the world were clamoring to get into this amazing country.” Though her parents saw some financial success in their new country and Lowinger herself rose from a small South Beach apartment to build a successful art restoration practice, the generational weight of dreams foregone, marital tensions, and homelands left behind, wormed indelibly into the family. Undercurrents of violent tempers, indignation, and self-doubt hum throughout the text, with the author’s simple, straightforward prose and humble anecdotes belying her impressive professional stature, particularly as one of the few Latinas in the field. Lowinger offers detailed but approachable explanations of materials and techniques used in her work as metaphors (some more cohesive than others) for life’s ups and downs, from personal experiences of marriage and divorce to societal reckonings with racial, political, or economic injustice. As she acquired the skills, experience, and judgment required to lead prolific restoration projects, she began to understand, forgive, and love the places and people she c