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.
On July 19, 2023 at 6:30 PM Eastern, please join me and author Beth Kirschner as we each read from our historical novels at Schuler Books, 2513 Jackson Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan (in the Westgate Shopping Center). I will read from One Person’s Loss, about Jewish newlyweds who escape Berlin for Brooklyn in 1937, admonished by their families to “have children to save our people” on the eve of the Holocaust. Beth will read from Copper Divide, about a friendship tested by the massive and violent copper miners’ strike in 1913 that split the once-peaceful community around Calumet, Michigan. Read more about the novels and their authors at the bookstore’s event website. The event is FREE and open to all, but please register here so Schuler’s knows you plan to join us. Hope to see you there!
“Hundreds of Polish Jewish children, aged one to eighteen, fled to a camp in Tehran occupied by the Soviets. For months, we suffered from illness and malnutrition until Zionist youth leaders from Palestine arrived to take care of us.” 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.
Zionist youth leaders treat Jewish refugee children in a tent camp in Tehran
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
A 1943 poll showed half of U.S. respondents thought the fact that million of Jews had been murdered was a rumor. By 1944, three-quarters believed Nazi concentration camps were real, but that hundreds of thousands, at most, were killed. The State Department misled Congress and the American people. Today, ignorance of the Holocaust is rampant, especially among millennials and Gen Z. 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.
Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long lied about Nazi atrocities and the number of refugees admitted to the U.S.
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn before the Nazi slaughter begins
My Goodreads and Amazon review of Kantika by Elizabeth Graver (Rating 4) – A Serenade to Sephardic Immigrants. The story of Rebecca in Kantika (“sing” in Ladino) by Elizabeth Graver, is an usual take on the American Jewish experience, that of a Sephardic Jew from Turkey (via Spain) rather than an Ashkenazi Jew from Eastern Europe. The book honors the author’s own immigrant ancestors. In the Torah (Old Testament), Rebecca is a beautiful young woman who has the courage to leave her homeland and venture into unknown territory to marry the equally unknown, but troubled, Isaac. She becomes the “decider,” the leaders of her generation, guaranteeing her people’s future. So too does this early twentieth century Rebecca, a young widow with two boys, David and Alberto, cross an ocean to marry Sam, a widower with a daughter, Luna, whose disabilities — the result of cerebral palsy — are more severe than Rebecca has been led to believe. Arriving in a chaotic household, and determined to succeed, Rebecca takes charge. Her painstaking (painful) yet undeterred efforts to teach her severely physically handicapped, but mentally sharp, stepdaughter Luna are moving. Strong-willed but well matched combatants, both emerge victorious. Luna achieves independence and personhood while Rebecca achieves grudging respect and acceptance as her mother. The early part of the book is occasionally bogged down by the author’s exposition on Sephardic Jewish culture. Later in the book, as Graver introduces other narrative voices and points of view, important information is missing. For example, after much is made of how and when her two boys can join her, the narrative advances three years without readers learning how they got to America and what their reunion with their mother was like. As a writer of historical fiction myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I know the importance of including that information selectively and organically in the narrative. At times, Graver includes either too much or too little. The passages from Luna’s point of view are absorbing, those from David less so. I missed hearing Rebecca’s voice which, when it finally returns, sounds diminished. Graver’s choice to pass the narrative to the next generation mirrors the immigrant experience, but the book loses its force. Those reservations aside, Kantika is a rich and engaging story of multiple and often conflicting identities. The biblical Rebecca and Kantika’s Rebecca each arrive in a new land and earn the mantle of matriarch. Graver persuades us that we are indebted to their creative vision and their no-nonsense strength.
An homage to Graver’s immigrant ancestors
Why writers read: “Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman
In 1926, the wealthy eccentric barrister Charles Vance Millar, having no heirs, left the bulk of his estate to the Toronto woman giving birth to the most babies in the decade following his death. The race was on for his fortune, which newspapers dubbed “The Great Stork Derby.” Inspired by this real, but bizarre, event in Canadian history, I wrote the novel The Great Stork Derby, about an imaginary family caught up in the madness. Fifty years later, the ailing widower Emm Benbow, who made his wife Izora have lots of babies, must now face his estranged grown children. The novel asks whether this “bad dad” can finally learn that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.
Toronto, 1926: A husband pressures his wife to have babies for a large cash prize
“An aid society sent me, my two older brothers, and my sister to Switzerland. My mother and baby brother hid for two years in a French castle with non-Jewish refugees. My father escaped from a work camp and joined the resistance. We all survived and reunited after the war.” 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.
Jews and non-Jews hid from the Nazis in a crumbling French castle
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
In recognition of June being Pride Month, I invite readers to revisit my short story “Death, Shmeath” (North American Review, Summer 2021), which was inspired by the life of Sidney Franklin. Here’s the log line: “In ‘Death, Shmeath,’ set in 1932 Brooklyn and based on a real character, an Orthodox father struggles with his son’s worldwide fame as the first and only gay Jewish matador.” Read more in SHORT STORIES.
Sidney Franklin, the gay Jewish matador from Brooklyn
North American Review, founded in 1815, is the oldest literary journal in the U.S.
“Clutching the few filthy possessions we’d salvaged while leaving the camps, we followed the Red Cross workers with uncertainty. We were suspicious when they took us to the showers, hesitant to enter, trusting no one.” 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.
The American Red Cross aided people liberated from the concentration camps
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
“We were divided into two groups, my father and I still united, when we heard my uncle shout, ‘Come to this side.’ Amid packs of angry dogs, we crossed to the other line. We were taken to a work camp. The other group was sent to the gas chambers.” 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.
Right or left? Work camp or gas chamber?
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
My creative nonfiction essay “Riley and Lucille” appears in the May 2023 issue of The Blue Mountain Review (pp. 155-158), published by The Southern Collective Experience. Written on the eve of surgery to save my right eye, “Riley and Lucille” ponders how my habit of naming ailing body parts is a tool to confront, communicate, laugh about, and adapt to the physical challenges of aging. Read more in MEMOIR.
The Southern Collective Experience publishes The Blue Mountain Review
Why writers write: “Fiction is like listening to someone’s heartbeat through a stethoscope. Memoir is like open-heart surgery and holding someone’s heart in your hands.” – Maya Shanbhag Lang
