Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
It is said that “an army marches on its stomach,” but what if the food is awful? In WWI (the era of my novel On the Shore), soldiers ate Iron Rations. They pounded the hard tack into chips with rifle butts and soaked bully beef in soup or hot water. To find out how soldiers supplemented this tasteless fare with snacks from the “gedunk stand,” see On the Shore in NOVELS. Learn the more colorful names for military food in BEHIND THE STORY.
My Amazon review of The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (Rated 4): Electrifying story of compassion and courage – Diane Ackerman tells an electrifying true story of compassion and courage. The book is filled with the joys of nature and the horrors of wartime occupation. It captures the personalities of the people and the animals who lived with and cheered them. The writing is sometimes stilted and too many details obscure rather than illuminate the setting. However, it is worth plowing through the excess verbiage for the gems of humanity.
My WWII-era novel-in-progress, tentatively titled One Person’s Loss, includes rituals that the protagonists, German Jewish immigrants, use to ward off the “evil eye” when their baby is born. I researched whether their Italian immigrant neighbors might have similar superstitions. Jews tie red ribbons on the carriage, and/or a red string called a roite bindele around the infant’s left wrist, to protect it from the envy of demons. Italians wear a cornicello, a charm resembling a red pepper, to ward off bad luck and tocca ferro (touch iron). Read more about these and other good luck rituals in BEHIND THE STORY.
On the Shore ends in 1925. What was happening on the U.S. cultural scene that year? People were listening and dancing to “Tea for Two”; watching Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush; eating ice cream in cones rolled by a machine; and complaining when Babe Ruth was fined and suspended after showing up late for batting practice following a night on the town. Read more about the era of On the Shore (1917-1925) by clicking on NOVELS.
My Amazon review of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (Rated 2): Can a Great Writer Make a Boring Character Interesting? – Philip Roth is one of my favorite authors, yet I’d never read this winner of the 1995 National Book Award for fiction. Alas, I shouldn’t have done so now. Even Roth cannot make the sex-drenched misanthropic puppeteer Mickey Sabbath come to life. He means his title character to be transgressive; he is merely unimaginatively obsessive. Save the brilliant section where Sabbath visits the Jersey shore of his childhood, and the family memories scattered throughout, there is little to redeem the novel’s self-indulgent writing. Was I shocked? No, merely bored.
Discovered while researching a story titled “A Fifth Way” – The Band-Aid was invented 1920 by Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson for his wife Josephine, who frequently cut and burned herself while cooking. The original Band-Aids were handmade and not popular, using resources available at the time which were limited in an era of poverty. By 1924, J & J made a machine that produced sterilized Band-Aids. The first decorative Band-Aids, introduced in 1951, were a commercial success. Not until decades later were colored adhesive bandages and clear ones for all skin colors created. Read more about popular culture in history in BEHIND THE STORY.
My Amazon review of The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck (Rated 5): A testament to enduring friendship – Jessica Shattuck tells a moving story of moral certainty clouded by ambiguity and survival in defiance of trauma. Above all, the book is a testament to the enduring friendships formed by shared experiences and memory.
My novel On the Shore ends in 1925, an eventful year in media. On March 4, Calvin Coolidge became the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio. The low key Coolidge (dubbed “Silent Cal” by the press) did not want an inaugural ball and the post-inaugural parade lasted under an hour. However, Coolidge’s speech, outlining his plan for a modest and restrained government, was one of the longest inaugural addresses in history. Read more about the public’s receptiveness to radio in On the Shore (NOVELS).
While researching the era of On the Shore. (1917-1925), I read about Annie Oakley, a TV western heroine of my childhood. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860, the sixth of nine children in a poor Quaker family, this five-foot tall sharpshooter set a record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row on April 16, 1922. Read more about On the Shore in NOVELS and about Oakley’s amazing life as a performer and gun educator in BEHIND THE STORY.
Apropos of my BLOG post (09/06/17) and REFLECTIONS about “The Five Percent Rule,” referencing the need to be selective when deciding how much historical information to include in a creative work, read these remarks from an interview with Ken Burns by Ian Parker in The New Yorker (September 04, 2017, p. 53): “In the early years of production on a documentary, Burns [is] likely to be reading relevant historical accounts. … But he does not strive for expertise. ‘I can’t be in the weeds,’ of scholarship, he said. He has too little time and, besides, ‘It’s important to have someone saying, ‘Who the fuck cares?’” I count on myself, and my critique group, to tell me “WTFC.”
