Month: April 2023

What I’m Reading: Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt (Rating 5) – A Courageous Search for the Meaning of Being. Ellie Adkins, the young protagonist of Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt, is a seeker whose life has fallen apart. She grieves over a parental divorce for which she feels responsible, is abandoned by a noncommittal boyfriend, is fired for being “insufficiently committed,” laments her inadequacy as a friend, and most injurious, is cast aside by her much older Buddhist teacher and lover, Calvin. In short, Ellie is a mess. Is her suffering an opportunity, as her guru propounds, or justification for hopelessness? Unable to move forward, Ellie further endangers herself by trekking to Tibet to retrieve an artifact the guru covets to prove her worthiness. Yet the more she tries to liberate herself from her demons, she more she succumbs to their debilitating power. In notebooks and letters, Ellie vents her tangled emotions, enmeshing readers in the escalating turmoil. Will she find the love she seeks? Will she even survive? As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Brandt’s uncanny ability to channel her character’s obsessive rage and despair. On the surface, Ellie’s life is empty. But her inner life is a huge bundle of astute observations and inventive actions. Brandt’s vivid writing allows readers to accompany Ellie on her courageous search for the meaning of being.

Should we succumb to or surpass our suffering?

Why writers read: “Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” – Annie Proulx

Survivor Story: Model Concentration Camp

“We slept in bunk beds in the attic and worked with civilians down in the factory. It was a model concentration camp — the kind Nazis displayed to the Red Cross to show Jews worked as laborers, not for the German army. For sure, they didn’t show the Red Cross places like Auschwitz and its crematorium!” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

A Jewish “official” displayed by Nazis to the Red Cross at a “model” concentration camp

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Learn History Through Fiction: “We Didn’t Know”

It’s a myth that Americans were ignorant about what was happening in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. A review of magazines and newspapers shows they had ample access to information detailing what the Nazis were doing to Jews and others targeted by Hitler’s regime. History shows America failed to end WW2 sooner or admit those fleeing Nazi persecution. Read about a German Jewish family who tries to escape to the U.S. in the novel One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Ignorance about Nazi persecution in WW2 is a myth; Americans knew!

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn before the Nazi slaughter begins

Survivor Story: Imagining My Parents

“At age 54, my childhood memories were awakened when I read about children who lived in Otwock’s Jewish orphanage. I discovered that I was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 when I was nine months old. Now I imagine my parents, a young, handsome couple, fighting in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Young ghetto fighters

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) — Survivor Story: More Slices a Loaf

“As our numbers grew, a loaf of bread was cut into 13 slices (not 9 or 10), the soup was clearer, and only on Sundays would we find pieces of potato or even macaroni in it.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

On “good” Sundays, the soup would have bits of potato

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Survivor Story: Saved by a Ladder

“My grandmother hid with my mom and aunt in an attic. A man with two sons and a young couple were already there. There was a ladder, but no one to take it away. When the SS searched the building, the ladder saved them. A soldier said that if anyone was up there, they wouldn’t have left it.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

An obvious ladder made the SS think no one would dare to hide in the attic

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Survivor Story: Stymied by Border Patrol

“Partisan quarrels over U.S. immigration prompt me to reflect on my own arrival at age 7, escaping from World War II. More than the odyssey that took us from Poland to the Soviet Union to Japan to the U.S., border patrols threatened us at every turn and left us in legal limbo even when we finally arrived in America.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Then, as now, border patrols blocked hopeful refugees at every crossing

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Learn History Through Fiction: Jews Barred as “Communist Spies”

In 1948, the U.S. Congress admitted 200,000 Displaced Persons (DPs), but barred 90% of Jewish survivors who had been to Russia or Poland, suspecting them of being Communist agents. History shows America failed to end WW2 sooner or admit those fleeing Nazi persecution. Read about a German Jewish family who tries to escape to the U.S. in the novel One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

U.S. Congress barred thousands of Jews suspected of being Communist spies

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn before the Nazi slaughter begins

What I’m Reading: Bewilderment by Richard Powers

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Bewilderment by Richard Powers (Rating 4) – A Wild Ride Through Earth and Cosmos. Bewilderment by Richard Powers is a novel about loss — the loss of a parent, the feared loss of a child, the loss of earth’s ecosystem, the loss of an opportunity to explore distant realms. The title connotes confusion but is also an old term for returning to the wild. Grieving the death of his wife, an astrophysicist and father of a nine-year-old boy with over-diagnosed mental health problems tries to save his gifted but sensitive son without resorting to chemical treatments. Together they explore the wilds of nature, and the imagined wilds of far-off planets where life assumes many different forms. Powers poses parallel heartbreaking questions: Can a father avert the loss of his beloved child? Can humanity avert the loss of our earth? Mistakes are made. Some involve a brain-altering technology that Powers invents, not always convincingly. Others, wholly believable, evoke a parent’s desperate attempts to keep his unique but fragile child. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), one who prizes character development, I especially admire the authenticity of the father’s roller coaster emotions. Readers too are in for a wild and be-wildered ride through earth and cosmos.

An imaginative yet down-to-earth novel

Why writers read: “To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan

Survivor Story: Bad People, and Good

“I was taken in by a wealthy farmer and his wife. Someone informed the Germans. When they came to investigate, the farmer huffed that someone as well established as him would never risk hiding a Jew. The SS believed him. Some people are criminals, some are good.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Good people saved lives by risking their own

Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter