A Reunion of Ghosts

..the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations..

A Reunion of Ghosts is a story that seems to be totally based on this premise.


Judith Claire Mitchell, author of A Reunion of Ghosts deserves so much credit for the clever concept she has created for this book.  Three sisters living in current day New York City have spent their lives grappling with the inheritance of family guilt.  Their Great Grandfather was Lenz Alter, who helped discover Zyklon gas which is later developed into Zyklon B gas used in the extermination of people during World War II.  A Jewish scientist whose work helped in the alienation of his people.  In each generation before them someone has committed suicide.  It is a heavy burden of family guilt they carry with them through life.

This story carries through out many themes for discussion and thought.  Is there a collective guilt if an ancestor of yours helped the Holocaust with his scientific discoveries?  Is there any glory in suicide?  Or is there anything positive in being able to control your destiny by picking the time you want to die instead of living life and letting it take its natural course?

Mitchell mixes a fictional family of characters with real people who lived and worked in Germany in the years leading up to the Great War.  Lenz Alter, whose name translates to spring and old age, is part of the group of scientific geniuses of their day.  Fictional characters, Lenz and his wife Iris are friends with the Einsteins, Albert and Mileva.  They are living and working with the likes of Max Planck, Otto Hahn, and Lise Mietner.  

Another interesting issue brought up in the story is the life of women during the 1930s.   Most women married and stayed home while their husbands went to work. Women like Lise Mietner gave up family life for their careers.  Mitchell shows us the real unhappy marriage of Albert and Mileva Einstein and of Lenz and Iris Alter.  Mileva and Iris could have been successful scientists in their own right. They had given up their studies and research when they married.  As they watch their husbands succeed along with Marie and Pierre Curie they ruminate on how they have been left behind and left out.  They feel they are the great women behind the recognized successful men.  "I'm as responsible for special relativity as Albert," Mileva says..."We are Germany's Curies, Albert and I. It's just that no one is allowed to know it."

Iris agrees that she understands every aspect of Lenz's work. She has edited his papers and typed his manuscript.  She has made suggestions along the way.  Mileva doesn't understand Iris being so calm, "I don't see how you can be so blase about it.  Our own husbands.  They took our careers.  They stood in our light."

So the point is raised numerous times through the book, does the knowledge of the scientist who creates something that can be used for good, in this fertilizer, and is then redeveloped to be used for evil by someone else, Zyklon B, determine his guilt?  Then to take it to the next logical step, the patriot asks, "..how is being dead different if it's caused by chlorine gas rather than by flying pieces of metal?'     But the sisters also learn that their great grandfather was at the Battle of Ypes, during World War One and actually helped release the fumes.  Mitchell writes, "it it like discovering the unexpurgated Brothers Grimm version of a fairy tale you've known only as a Disney cartoon.  You thought the wicked step-sister only tried to squeeze her big fat feet into the delicate slipper?  Oh no- not so.  She actually cut off her toes to manage it."

Plod through all the details and follow along with the tale to the very end for a satisfying conclusion. This is a very interesting story that will keep you thinking and possibly changing your opinion all the way to the end.

Zipporah, wife of Moses

Zipporah is my Hebrew name so it goes without saying that I think she is a strong, wonderful, female role model in the Torah.  Though in the real Five Books of Moses, Zipporah has a very small part to play, author Marek Halter, does a nice job of creating a beautiful midrash around the relationship between Moses and Zipporah.  Halter gives Zipporah an important role in helping to inspire Moses to step and return to Egypt.  He has fled after killing an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating an Hebrew slave.  She is the woman behind the man, pushing him forward to go back and save his people.  Her father is a great inspiration to Moses but Zipporah is the one who really encourages him all along the way.

This book shows us the story from Zipporah's point of view.  We learn about her upbringing and her family relationship.  We also learn about the relationship between her and Miriam and Aaron, Moses' siblings.  All of this is created from the imagination of the author, but it makes a wonderful story about a time gone by.  It gives women a much more important role than the Torah describes.

Zipporah is a woman ahead of her time.  With Zipporah standing behind him, Moses becomes a defender of the oppressed and and aa liberated of the enslaved.

Mademoiselle Chanel

What a wonderful story!  I must now go to a perfume counter at the nearest mall and take a whiff of Chanel No. 5.  This book leaves you amazed at the life of Coco Chanel.  The author, C.W. Gortner, who admits to being a lifelong admirer of Chanel, has written a novel that really grabs the reader. This book has left this reader completely intrigued with Coco and her life.

I know that when I mentioned on Facebook that I wanted to read this book a friend said she wouldn't read about Coco Chanel because she was Antisemitic.  But actually I came away from reading this book feeling that Mademoiselle Chanel might actually have assisted Jews escaping France by letting them hide in one of her country homes.  During the war she is involved romantically with the German, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklzge.  Though this probably is part of what has led to the suggestion that she was a Nazi sympathizer, this book leaves the reader with the impression that Dincklzge may have been working with resistance to help Jews escape. So Coco did not do anything purposely to help and yes she did denounce her business partner with Parfums Chanel, but she may have been helping indirectly.

The story of disagreement with the perfume distributors, the Wertheimer brothers, was based on the fact that she had negotiated a contract for 10% of the proceeds.  When she finds out how popular the perfume is and how quickly it is selling she wants to renegotiate the percentage they receive but they refuse. She tries to take them to court and fight but they win.  When the war breaks out so,done suggests that this is her chance to end her involvement with them and cancel the contract by denouncing the, as Jews.  In the end it does not help her of of the contract and the Wertheimer brothers escape to America.

The woman was driven and the men in her life helped her attain her goal of starting her business and opening stores but she never wanted to beholden to anyone.  She insisted on being self sufficient. This interlude between Chanel and two of her men friends shows her strong feelings when she says,  "He's going to help me open my shop.  I'll not be kept by anyone.'  Balsan rolled his eyes, emptying his glass.  'Again with the shop!  G-d save us, she's as stubborn as a mule...She'll ruin you if you indulge this fantasy of hers.  She'll take every centime you have.'  Boy replied, ' I'm prepared for it, You may think her ambition frivolous but I do not.  I'm extending her a loan to be repaid with interest."

The story of Chanel's life is a fascinating one.  She is orphaned as a young girl when her mother dies and her father sends her and her siblings away. She is raised in a convent by nuns who teach her to sew.  She has an inner passion to work that drives her through her life to succeed.  She starts her working life as a mistress and a shop owner who makes and sells hats.  She grows her business over the years expanding to casual clothing for women, releasing them from corsets, then she creates the little black suit and Chanel No. 5, Coco's signature perfume.  And finally she leaves a legacy of the Chanel suit, a collarless jacket and straight skirt and the smell of Chanel No. 5.

C. W. Gortner has done a fabulous job of creating a novel that though not a true biography gives the reader real insight into the life and world of Mademoiselle Coco Chanel.

Hotel Moscow

Hotel Moscow, by Talia Carner is the story of life in Russia during the break up of communism.  Brooke Fielding is a thirty eight year old investment manager working for a company in New York City.  While her company is in the middle of a take over she is given a two week vacation.  She joins a group of women going to Russia to teach business skills to Russian women starting up small businesses. 

Brooke is the child of holocaust survivors.  She has been affected by the legacy of her parents, who survived the war when so many others did not.  Brooke grew up hearing the stories and fears of her parents. Her parents are Russian Jews who were persecuted during the war and sent to concentration camps.  As she travels through Russia, Brooke feels the fear and trepidation her parents felt back during the prewar years.  As the story progresses Brooke grapples with her feelings about being Jewish.  As her character grows she becomes more understanding of her parents and more comfortable with her Judaism.

Brooke is traveling with a group of women entrepreneurs who will be teaching businesswomen in the newly free Russia skills that will help them succeed in the emerging market. 

Traveling in a communist country things are not always what they seem.  The story develops with many layers and different perspectives of life in Russia during the 1990s.

The reader follow the thoughts and feelings of Brooke as she interacts with the women she is trying to help and educate about independence and business skills.  She also runs into a criminal scheme being practiced by a group of upper level government employees.  Brooke begins to understand her mother better and feels more connected to her Judaism than she ever has before. 

This novel is based on personal impressions this author had while traveling in Russia during the political uprising of the Russian parliament against President Boris Yeltsin.  Carner has used her own story to write this novel.  In an essay written in December 2011, Carner writes, "There were so many women desperate to provide for their children in a country where the majority of households were run by women because the men often drank, beat their wives, and died of alcoholism at the average age of fifty-seven." 

Motivated by the Russian women's courage Carner makes a second trip to Russia in October 1993 landing in Moscow two hours after the uprising begins against President Boris Yeltsin.  Using the art of the novel, creating wonderful female characters and the intrigue of illegal business dealings, Carner gives the reader a realistic feeling for what it was really like to  be in Russia at this time in history.

Also quite fun are the patterns of speech used by the Russian women.  Here are some examples of the sayings used by the characters:  When the character of Olga is explaining to her husband that she wants to help build a better country for her granddaughter, she is outraged that Yeltsin puts out a directive to give all available jobs to men.  She says, "it is easier for a donkey when a woman gets off the cart."  Another beautiful saying, "Even nightingales can't live on fairy tales."  Then later in the story as the women are figuring the criminal scheme that the mafia is putting together Olga tells Brooke, "Even a blind horse can pull a cart, if he 's being lead to water."  One last wonderful quote, as Olga tries convince a friend to help make Russia a better place for women to live and work says, "Make yourself into a sheep, and you'll meet a wolf nearby."

Talia Carner won the Forward National Literature Award in the historical fiction category in 2011 for her novel, Jerusalem Maiden.  She also wrote Puppet Child and China Doll.  She has worked for both Redbook and Savvy Woman magazines.  In 1993, Carner was sent twice by the United States Information Agency to Russia, and in 1995 participated in the NGO women's conference in Beijing, China.  She is a board member of HBI, the Hadassah, Brandeis Institute, the Jewish women's research center at Brandeis University.

Being Esther

Esther is aging and her daughter wants to put her in an assisted living facility.   The subject matter is one that so many baby boomer kids are facing these days as their parents grow older.  The story is told from Esther's point of view.  She is living in an apartment with a friend across the courtyard, who she sees everyday and talks to on the phone every morning.   Esther thinks back on her life.  Little trigger thoughts of her parents, her marriage, all her old friends now gone.

She makes phone calls to old friends and learns that they have gone to nursing homes or past on.
She recalls her marriage to Marty and when her daughter, Ceely,  left home.  She wonders what happened but can not seem to have any deep discussions with Ceely even now.  "Esther sets down her pen and wonders if Ceely will ever sit like this and wish things had been otherwise.  Perhaps she should warn her daughter, 'Let's talk.  Now.  Before it's too late.'  But Ceely is too busy, even for a cup of coffee."

The characters in this book do not come alive for me.  They are silted and the dialog is unemotional.
The reader does not become attached to anyone.  There is no suspense or plot development.  You just go along hearing what day to day life was and is like for Esther.  This is not a book to excited over.

The Paris Architect

Charles Belfoure has written a compelling novel about the Holocaust from a perspective I have not explored before.  Seeing the war through the eyes of French architect, Lucien Bernard the reader sees and feels the conflict of conscience and everyday life of a man living in occupied France.

Belfoure has created in this novel a story that gives the reader many issues to wonder how they would react in.  As you read the book you are presented with a number of quandaries to consider; how would you react to the Germans coming and occupying your country?  How would you react to the Germans coming in and killing people your friends, either because they themselves were Jewish or because they had hidden someone Jewish?  Would you hide and protect someone at personal risk to yourself?

In The Paris Architect, the main character, Lucien Bernard learns many new things about himself as he gets involved in designing both armament factories for the Germans and hiding places for the Jewish resistance. Bernard is a man who is struggling, until the war, with low self esteem, an unhappy marriage and is trying to build his career as a prominent architect.  When he is approached by a wealthy industrialist to design a hiding place to help a Jewish friend, Bernard refuses at first, falling back on the ideas his father had instilled in him as a child.  But the industrialist, Auguste Manet, makes him an offer he cannot refuse, the chance to design a factory for the German war effort and the promise of more contracts in the future.  There are large amounts of money involved which help Lucien buy food and other items on the black market that make life sweeter during the occupation.  But in the end it is the feeling of pride in designing beautiful structures that keeps Lucien Bernard collaborating with the Germans on building the factories.  His wife accuses him of having sold his soul to the devil,  "No, traitor's not the right word.  You're a sort of architectural Mephistopheles.  You know, you sold your soul to the devil in order to design."

On the other hand, Bernard is finding himself as a man and he is learning that bravery can take many forms.  Bernard grows during this novel and really becomes a mensch as the plot develops.  This book is a page turner that keeps your pulse pumping as you root for the characters you become attached to survive and succeed in the end.  There are many characters in this book to love and a few to hate.  There are also many twists and turns as the plot develops and keeps the reader intrigued till the unexpected ending.  Beautifully constructed by Charles Belfoure.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

Wow, did I love this book!!!  Author, Susan Jane Gilman finds just the right voice for this narrating this story.  Looking back at her life, narrator, Malka Treynovsky a.k.a Lillian Dunkle, a.k.a "The Ice Cream of Orchard Street" uses a smart aleck, sassy, stereotyped New Yorker characteristics to describe how she came to end up in the situation she now finds herself at the age of 70.

Using the historical perspective of the immigrant lifestyle found in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the early 1900, Gilman paints a picture of what life was like after getting off the boat thinking you had arrived in the land of plenty.  The Treynovsky family arrives at Ellis Island with a father, mother and four daughters.  They have escaped the pogroms of Russia but have no relatives in America.  Life is tough for the family in America and early on Malka is abandoned by her family after being injured in an accident on the streets of New York.  Luckily, taken in by an Italian family, she is taken care of and learns that with cunning and a strong work ethic she can be successful.

Many of the experiences she lives through as child shape the person she will be as an adult.  The lessons of her childhood play out throughout her life in how she deals with the people around her and how she reacts to the situations she finds herself in.  She always seems to be in competition with everyone and even when her life is one filled with love, luxury and satisfaction she is still not happy.
Told in such an entertaining way, the lesson the reader can take away from this story is that fame and fortune do not buy happiness.  That success is really when one recognizes that their life is good.
Albert Dunkle, Lillian's husband, is a simple man who sees the good in life.  He is happy in his marriage and satisfied with the success of their Ice Cream business.  He does not have the need for revenge or oneupmanship that consumes Lillian.  

Very interestingly, Gilman brings in some wonderful tidbits of history about ice cream to this story.
One piece of fascinating history is how popular ice cream was during World War II.  Each branch of the military tried to one up the others serving ice cream to their troops.  Some made their own ice cream, while in 1945 the first "floating ice cream parlor was built for the sailors in the western Pacific Ocean.  In the book, Albert Dunkle serves his country by creating the ice cream machine and operating it on the floating ice cream parlor,  "Only the United States of America deemed ice cream 'an essential item for troop morale'.  And it alone continued producing, ordering ice cream freezers on submarines, ice cream freezers on tankers, ice cream freezers on cargo ships.  Over the course of the war, the United States military became the largest ice cream manufacturer in history."

Later on Gilman fits in the polio epidemic into the plot line.  Ice cream it seems also played a part in the polio scare of the 1950s.  During the summer of 1952 there was an outbreak of polio cases among children in the US.  Dr Benjamin Sandler decided it was due to the increase in sugar from eating ice cream.  Ice cream sales plummeted.  But in the book, Lillian finds a way to turn the tide and become the most successful ice cream business during this scare.  She uses her infirmity to sell ice cream. She also is smart enough to recognize the need for refrigerated trucks to help dispense the vaccine after it is developed by Jonas Salk.  "Since the vaccine needed to be refrigerate, Bert and I volunteered Dunkle's fleet of ice cream trucks to help transport them across the country.  Our franchise owners themselves got involved recruiting 'Polio Pioneers', as they were called....Nobody gives us credit now-a-days, but I am telling you: Dunkles was responsible for encouraging hundreds of thousands of children to get inoculated against polio."

Susan Jane Gilman has done a terrific job of writing a entertaining story that encompasses many interesting historical points of the 1900s from immigration to the Lower East to modern day life
in America.  She describes vividly the lifestyle of the people living on the Lower East of NY.  She creates three lovable characters in Lillian, Albert and her grandson, Jason.  She builds suspense as the story unfolds because Lillian keeps referring to a court case she is involved in for trouble she has gotten herself into.  She tells her story looking back over her life leading up to the mistakes she has made.  Gilman's writing style really makes the characters come to life.  Her supporting cast is also well defined.  This is a fun enjoyable book you will not want to put down.