The Serpent Bearer

 A romantic World War II spy novel, with buried family secrets, dangerous German criminals and a love story.  In The Serpent Bearer, author Jane Rosenthal, creates a novel that spans time from the war years to present day.   We learn the story of Solomon, Solly, Meisner, who travels from Spain to Mexico and ends up in a small Jewish community in North Carolina where he raises his daughter, Isabelle.  

Now, in his dotage, Solly reminisces about the past revealing his family secrets and the exciting life he led as a spy during World War II.  At the same time Izzy is becoming aware that there was more to her father’s history than she knew. The version of her parents' love story she had grown up hearing may not have been the whole story.

Sitting in his assisted living apartment, all the memories come flooding back to Solly.  First, his narrow escape when the building he was in was bombed during the Spanish Civil War.  Then, as a young Jewish lawyer, in South Carolina, he was recruited to go to Mexico during World War II to spy on suspected Nazi activity there.  Sent by the COI, the newly created government department to gather foreign intelligence, Solly agrees to go hoping to find his lost love interest and answers to what happened in Spain. 

This should be a simple mission Solly thinks, “He’d been so cavalier, so full of bravado, thinking what the hell, Solly - go to Mexico, have a look around, listen in on some radio communications, report back, win Estelle’s hand in marriage and come home, victorious, free. A hero. What a fool.”  page 225

The mission brings him back in contact with people he worked alongside in Spain, who he had thought were his friends. What had happened to them? Why had they not tried to find him? Now he sees that the people he thought he knew may not be who he thought they were.  He begins to wonder if the woman he loved really is who she says she is. As he encounters Nazi operatives and Jewish refugees, Solly is finding out who is a true comrade and who is a subversive.  

Wonderfully detailed descriptions of the landscape, buildings and locations, bring the reader right into the action. The Serpent Bearer is a story of intrigue, danger and bravery. Bringing the reader some interesting history of Nazi activity in Mexico within a plot abundant in gripping action scenes, near death experiences and unselfish love. 

The Little Goat

 Passover is one of the most celebrated of the Jewish holidays. It is a holiday observed in homes around the world. There are many different Haggadot, offering a variety of ways to put together a seder.   Families build on generational customs or create their own traditions to commemorate the spring holiday, when the Israelites left Egypt and started their journey to the promised land.  

In Dara Horn’s new graphic novel, One Little Goat, she brings her memories of family seders to teen readers. They will definitely be able to relate to the teenage angst of being caught at the dinner table for many hours with elderly relatives and younger cousins and siblings. 

Using themes and references to the Passover seder, Horn creates a witty, funny story about what can happen if you never find the Afikoman, the dessert without which a seder cannot end.

Bringing to life the goat from Chad Gadya, the song sung at the end of the seder about a father buying a goat for two zuzim, our protagonist is able to be the hero and find the missing matzah after six months of being stuck at the Seder.

The goat takes the “wise child” on a journey meeting characters from the many seders throughout history. They travel back in time and see his parents as children at their family seders, in the USSR, 1981, as refuseniks. Then back in time past the Holocaust and seder in the Warsaw Ghetto.  Back to the 1300s and creation of the Bird’s Head Haggadah.

They visited Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel, Nachman of Bratslav, and even Dona Gracia Nasi in Constantinople in 1556, during the Inquisition.  

Then the Goat takes the child who now is becoming wiser further back in time to meet Rav and Shmuel in the third century, known as great Amoriam, great Jewish scholars.  The Rabbis, Eliezer, Joshua, Elazar ben Azaria, Akiva and Tarfon make an appearance before the Goat takes the child to the night his ancestors left Egypt. 

This is a very clever way to tell the Passover story and explain its importance to older children.

It is a very timely story showing how throughout history Jews have been strong and resilient continuing their traditions even in the face of adversity.  Bringing home the message how special and magical maintaining our Jewish connections can be.

The Greatest Lie of All

 Author, Jill Cantor newest novel is titled  The Greatest Lie of All.  This is a twisting maze of tangled lives.  Amanda Grant is a young actress ready for a new challenge.  Leaving a relationship when her partner cheats on her, she is asked to star in a biopic  about the famous Gloria Diamond, a famous romance writer who had told her own tragic romance story in a memoir.  Now they are going to bring the story to the screen. Gloria is having second thoughts as the filming begins.  Amanda is trying to understand the person whose life she is going to represent.  She is having trouble getting to know Gloria.  

There are so many different surprises as we get to know Amanda, Gloria and even her son, the handsome lawyer, Will.  In alternating chapters we learn about Gloria’s life and Amanda’s past, how in the end lives overlap.

Marble Hall

 Anthony Horowitz does it again with the third installment of the Susan Ryeland mystery novels.  

This time the novel is titled Marble Hall and it so cleverly picks up right where the second book ended.  Susan Ryeland reminds the reader that Atticus Pund, the great detective was murdered and Ryeland’s life also almost ended as the last novel came to a close.  She had moved to Greece with her boyfriend and was going to start a new life.

But now she is back in New York and having just moved into a new apartment by herself she is looking for editing work again with a new publisher. She has realized that she needs to live in New York and work in publishing, the quiet island life is not for her.

The first job to come along is a new young talent who is writing a conclusion novel with the protagonist being Atticus Pund.  He has an idea to continue the series even though the original author is dead.

But all is not as it may seem and Susan gets mixed up with the writer and his family and strange things start to happen.  Life and fiction start to overlap and the secret to an old murder and a new murder may be revealed in the script that is being written.

Twisty and tangled plots run through the novel with a story within the story and characters that blur the lines of fiction and “fiction”.  I may have solved part of the mystery as I lay awake last night after reading to just before the reveal chapter, but then there was of course another twist that I was not expecting… 

Horowitz is a master of the craft and again brings an entertaining, incredibly well written mystery that there are quotes to underline and ideas to think about long after the book is closed.

The Storied Life A J Fikrey

 Gabrielle Zevin has written a delightful sweet story about a bookstore owner. The Storied Life of A J Fikrey, follows the widower book seller as he adjusts to the loss of his wife, the love of his life.  He had fallen in love and moved to Alice Island where she grew up and they opened a bookstore there. 

It is a ferry ride away from the mainland and relies on the tourist trade for their largest profits. Now he is depressed, drowning his sorrows in liquor and hoping to retire with the sale of a first edition Edgar Allen Poe book he found at a garage sale.  

Then the book is stolen and a baby girl is left in his store.  These two events completely change the course of his life. He must stay and continue to run the bookstore.  He cannot bring himself to send the little two year old girl over to the foster system.  He decides to keep her and bring her up as his own.  

All these changes in his life also change him.  He becomes a much more pleasant person.  Making friends, loving Maya, the child.  He even will be open to finding love again.  OF course there is a side story of his sister in aw who is in a terrible marriage.  The police chief becomes a reader and friend, he also had a bad marriage.

Such a wonderful examination of relationships, how to be a friend, a parent and  a good lover.  How to take care of yourself and change to the best you.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

 

This month I read a book that was written by the author, James McBride, who explains that he is the child of a black Reverend father and a white Jewish mother, whose family sat shiva for her when she married.

His first book was The Color of Water, which told the story of his upbringing as a mixed race child in a large family.  This time McBride brings us a novel which looks the horrible truths about race and prejudice squarely in the face.  He adds some beautiful prose that brings humor and offers the reader hope.

This novel takes the story of the Jewish immigrant in the 1920s who came to the United States and settled in the South, opening a grocery or dry goods store.  These Jews lived shoulder to shoulder with their Black neighbors.  This is the story of one little town, Pottstown, PA that is home to Moshe Ludlow and his wife, Chona, who live above the Heaven and Earth Grocery store.  Chona grew up in the store and continues to run the store after her marriage,  Moshe manages the Jewish Theater and brings in both klezmer music and then books the popular Black performer swing artist , Chick Webb.  The Jewish families are move off the Chicken Hill neighborhood to the center of town, changing the dynamics of the area.   Chona refuses to leave and the author explains,”Chona, for her part, saw them not as Negroes but as neighbors”

So Moshe and Chona stay and live side by side with their neighbors, when Chona is asked to hide Dodo, young black child who is deaf and thought to be dumb, after being in an accident with his mother.  Now the authorities are looking to take him away to an institution and Chona agrees to hide him.  She becomes quite attached to him and puts her own life at risk to save his.  

Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was all soul.”

When things go wrong and Dodo is taken away the townspeople and Moshe work together to get Dodo back from the horrific conditions in the state hospital.  The various characters in the book overcome the class and color divide to rescue Dodo.

This is a story of race, religion and color blindness.  It is the story of the immigtrant Jews from the shtels of Europe and their effort to find the American dream.  It is the story of coming together,  finding our common ground and seeing that despite all our differences we can live side by side.

McBride says in an interview, “What I tried to do in this book is show how people simply excused a lot of those differences, set them aside for the moment, and got to the business of finding the meal that would feed us all. I just wanted to show in this book that we have gotten along very well. We have got to stick together and deal with the reality of where we are. We’re in deep water, and we will end up in deeper water if we don’t pay attention.”

This novel shares a message that  is so relevant for the times we are now living in.   

Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder

 Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder by Bellamy Rose turned out to be a fun entertaining romantic mystery novel.   I had downloaded it and was not sure I would read it.  Then looking trough my pile for something quick and light I thought ok give it a quick try.

It did not disappoint.  If you like a romance novel this is fits the genre and adds a mystery to the plot.  Pomona is a spoiled brat.  At the age of 20 something, she lives in a hotel that her family owns.  She has all the money, clothes and wait staff she could every want.  She does not work, left college and just parties and posts online.  She is an influencer, sharing her lifestyle to viewers for ratings.  

Then her Grandmother is murdered and all te money and luxury living is pulled out from under her.  She has to go out and live like the average person in New York.  Her childhood nanny sets her up as the roommate with her son, Gabe.  Gabe helps Pom get a job in the coffeeshop he manages.  

Pom starts to learn what it is like to really be a caring human being. She learns to actually care about other people, not just take advantage of those around her for her own gain.

Of course Pom and Gabe start to work together to find out who killed her grandmother.  There is light suspense, romance and humor.  A good book for a snowy day or a beach read.