About the Book
Time Did It, a Family Saga, tells the true story of Ute Carson and her aristocratic family, whose lives, land, status and fortune were lost as they escaped Nazi Europe. Ute Maria Elisabeth Gräfin von Hardenberg-Carson was born on the Baltic Coast in Köslin, Pomerania. Providing a different perspective on 19th and 20th century Europe, the countess shares the drama, sadness, love, anger, betrayal, and joy that make her the woman she is today. Now living a very full life in America, Ute Carson continues her journey with unflinching love for family, a passion for living, and a wondrous outlook in spite of everything.
About the Author :
Ute Carson, a German-born writer from youth and an MA graduate in Comparative Literature from the University of Rochester, published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Ute's story, "The Fall," won Outrider Press's Grand Prize and appeared in its short story and poetry anthology, A Walk through My Garden, in 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Ute's poetry was televised on the Spoken Word Showcase 2009-2011, Channel Austin.A poetry collection Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem "A Tangled Nest of Moments" placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook, Folding Washing, was published in 2013 and her collection of poems, My Gift to Life, was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Ute received the Ovidu-Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Multicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018, she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Prize by the Plain View Press. Her poetry collection, Reflections, came out in 2018 and In the Blink of an Eye in 2023. Gypsy Spirit was published in 2020 as was her essay, "Even a Gloved Touch." Yellow Arrow Press issued Listen in 2021, and once again, Ute was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2023, her essay, "Deep in the Heart of Texas" was published by the Bullock Texas State History Museum and the magazine Bewildering Stories featured her essay "Caught in the U.S. Healthcare Maze." A plethora of poems and essays like "An Old Soul's Journey," "Seeing with the Third Eye," "Fainting on the Track," and "Tweaking My Conscience" were published in 2024 and 2025.Ute Carson resides in Austin, Texas with her husband, Ron. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, and a clowder of cats. Her website is utecarson.com.
Review :
This book, Time Did It, by Ute Carson, seems to be more than just one book. It feels like a saga. Many stories woven through more than one century. It's an actual true history passed down from mother to daughter to grandchild of an aristocratic family, of once wealthy landowners, braided into those of barons, baronesses, counts and countesses, just before the beginning of the first World War in Germany. And it traces a courageous line of women through two world wars and more, telling of tragedies and joys, losses of sons, of fortunes, of survival through challenging times and circumstances, of finding love, and of deep bonds between mother and daughter. She writes lush, beautiful descriptions of landscape, flora and fauna of many countries. Years of European history through the lives of these women, including a personal account of a grandmother's scary experience with Nazi officials which chilled me in the pit of my stomach and reminded me of what's happening right now in this country. And the story continues today, through Ute, who is a countess herself and the writer of this amazing journey of her remarkable family and her own very full life in this country today. Woven through it all is the bright thread of love for family and friends, past and present, and for all the many beautiful and wondrous things that life can be in spite of everything. -Drena Williams Bowerman-artist, poet, mother, fellow traveler
From late 19th century colonial Southwest Africa to pre-and post World Wars I and II central Europe to modern America, Ute Carson takes us on the personal journey that makes her the woman she is today.This unflinchingly honest, well-told memoir contains drama, sadness, love, anger, betrayal, and joy. It is a family story of three, long-lived women-Carson, her mother and her grandmother-all survivors. Readers see the tumultuous and frightening world they navigated as their family, derived from nobility, lived and ultimately escaped, not unscathed, Nazi Europe.Carson gives us very human renditions of herself and her loved ones, including flaws, but always told with caring and insight. Time Did It provides a different perspective on what we thought we knew about 19th and 20th century Europe, told through the lives of this remarkable family. -Todd L.Savitt, PH.D., Department of Bioethics and International Studies, Brody School of Medicine
