Today is my turn on the Fig Tree Books Blog Tour for JACOBO’S RAINBOW by David Hirshberg. This is a wonderful literary historical fiction that reads as a historical memoir.
Below you will find a book synopsis, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media link. Enjoy!
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Book Synopsis
JACOBO’S RAINBOW is set primarily in the nineteen sixties during the convulsive period of the student protest movements and the Vietnam War. It focuses on the issue of being an outsider, an altogether common circumstance that resonates with readers in today’s America. Written from a Jewish perspective, it speaks to universal truths that affect us all.
On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of a transformative event in Jacobo’s life – the day he is sent to jail – he writes about what happened behind the scenes of the Free Speech Movement, which provides the backdrop for a riveting story centered on his emergence into a world he never could have imagined. His recording of those earlier events is the proximate cause of his being arrested. Jacobo is allowed to leave jail under the condition of being drafted, engages in gruesome fighting in Vietnam, and returns to continue his work of chronicling America in the throes of significant societal changes.
Nothing is what it seems to be at first glance, as we watch Jacobo navigate through the agonies of divisive transformations that are altering the character of the country. Coming to grips with his own imperfections as well as revelations about the people around him, he begins to understand more about himself and how he can have an impact on the world around him … and how it, in turn, will have an effect on him.
The novel can be read on three levels: 1) as a coming of age story; 2) as a metaphor for what is happening on college campuses today, in terms of the shutting down of speech and the rise of anti-Semitism; 3) as a novel about Jewish identity and what life is like for the outsider.
by David Hirshberg Fig Tree Books LLC; May 4, 2021 ISBN hardcover: 9781941493281, $19.95; e-book: 9781941493-298, $9.99 Audiobook Retail: 9781705281567; Library: 9781705281574
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
JACOBO’S RAINBOW by David Hirshberg is a wonderful literary historical fiction novel that reads as a historical memoir set primarily during the tumultuous nineteen sixties.
Jacobo Toledano is the protagonist and the unique main character who chronicles his life in this memoir style tale. Jacobo comes from an isolated small community in New Mexico which leaves him with an unbiased view of the world and as an outsider he is the perfect storyteller for this tale.
On the fifteenth anniversary of the day Jacobo is sent to jail, he begins to write his story. He arrives at university only to be swept up by a charismatic leader of the Free Speech Movement and the protests of the Vietnam war. All the characters he writes about comes to life on the page with perceptive insights and sensitivity. His recording of these events is the cause of his being arrested.
Jacobo is given a choice, stay in jail or be drafted to fight in Vietnam. The gruesome fighting comes alive on the page and I remember watching it nightly on the news. (This was the first war to come into American homes nightly on the national news programs.) When he returns, he continues to chronicle a changing America.
This is a coming-of-age story set against the social upheaval of the nineteen sixties. It is also a tale of triumph over adversity, prejudice, lies and loss. This story and the past few years demonstrate that history can and will repeat itself if we are not ever observant and caretakers of everyone’s rights and freedom.
I highly recommend this novel and author!
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About the Author
David Hirshberg is the pseudonym for an entrepreneur who prefers to keep his business activities separate from his writing endeavors. As an author, he adopted the first name of his father-in-law and the last name of his maternal grandfather, as a tribute to their impact on his life. His first novel, My Mother’s Son was published in 2018 and won nine awards. Reviewers have compared Hirshberg’s writing to Michael Chabon’s and Saul Bellow’s, among others.
Today I am excited to be sharing my Feature Post and Book Review on the Blackthorn Book Tour for SINNER’S CROSS: A Novel of the Second World War by Miles Watson.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links.
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Book Description
In 1944, Sinner’s Cross was just a point on a map: a muddy track through shell-torn German woods. Worthless…except to the brass on both sides of the war, who are willing to sacrifice their best men to have it. Men like Halleck, a tough-as-nails Texan who traded driving cattle for driving soldiers; Breese, a phenomenal actor who can play any part but hero; and Zenger, the Nazi paratrooper who discovers Hitler’s Germany is a lousy place to grow a conscience. Their lives and deaths will intersect at the place called Sinner’s Cross.
Trigger warnings: Realistically reflects war conditions: graphic violence; death; physical and emotional suffering
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
SINNER’S CROSS by Miles Watson is a historical fiction book set in 1944 during the Hurtgen Forest campaign in WWII. There was no tactical advantage to this campaign and yet it was the longest campaign fought and the least successful. This is an amazing, dark, gritty, realistic look at war through the eyes of the three main characters.
This book is a depiction of the horrors of battle in graphic detail following three main characters; the battle-hardened Sgt. Halleck, a Texas cowboy and Lt. Breese, fresh from college, who wanted an acting career, but ended up in a meat-grinder field of combat and then there is the Nazi Major Zengy, Parachute Battalion. Their lives and deaths all end up intersecting at Sinner’s Cross.
This story’s main characters are diverse and yet the war brings them all down to basic survival and a kill or be killed mentality at Sinner’s Cross. But the author has also written into his characters thoughts of duty versus doubt and the overall conflict over the senseless loss of life over useless ground.
I feel as though the author has given me a glimpse into a small part of the past lives of my uncles and father that they never talked about except to other veterans. I have watched the movies “The Battle of the Bulge” and “Saving Private Ryan”, but somehow reading this book was even more intimate and chilling. I did have to put this book down a couple of times due to the intense feelings it provoked, but I also could not stop reading it because I had to know the outcome of each character.
I highly recommend this book for its exceptionally realistic depiction of war on the average man and the thought provoking motives of decisions made throughout.
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About the Author
Miles Watson was first published at the age of 17 and has never looked back. He is now an eleven-time award winning author of three novels, a short story collection and several novellas, and has vowed to write in every genre before he’s finished. When not at the typewriter, he has worked as everything from a law enforcement officer to a Hollywood make-up effects artist, and divides his time between the West and the East Coast.
As well as Awards for Sinner’s Cross, listed above, Miles Watson has also won multiple awards and citations for his other books:
THE OTHER EINSTEIN by Marie Benedict is a historical fiction story told by Mileva Maric Einstien, the first wife of the famous physicist Albert Einstein. I was completely captivated by the characters and the in-depth depiction of their lives.
Mileva “Mitza” Maric was one of the first females to study Physics at the Zurich Polytechnic university in 1896 which is where she met a classmate by the name of Albert Einstein. To be admitted to study at university, she had to be a scientific genius in her own right and even more talented than her male counterparts. She had several strikes against her though; the times she lived in, being a female, a physical disability, and being an Eastern European from Serbia.
Mileva’s life with Albert starts out with the promise of a bohemian life of scientific study and companionship, but cultural forces and a husband who enjoys and wants the limelight and fame for himself begin to destroy their marriage.
Ms. Benedict pulls together historical letters between the couple and family and friends accounts to prove Mileva’s contributions to Einstein’s famous papers and theories while they were married. I found this story so intriguing and I was looking up as many factual sites as I could while I was reading this fictional rendition to see how much is factual and how much is a supposition. The encounter in the book between Mileva and Marie Curie is fascinating as they discuss and compare their choices in their professional and personal lives.
I highly recommend this historical fiction story of a brilliant woman overshadowed by her famous husband!
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a commercial litigator at two of the country’s premier law firms. While practicing as a NYC lawyer, Marie dreamed of a fantastical job unearthing the hidden historical stories of women — and finally found it when she tried her hand at writing. She embarked on a new, thematically connected series of historical fiction excavating the stories of important, complex and fascinating women from the past with THE OTHER EINSTEIN, which tells the tale of Albert Einstein’s first wife, a physicist herself, and the role she might have played in his theories. She then released CARNEGIE’S MAID, the story of a brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie toward philanthropy, followed by the NYTimes bestseller THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM, the tale of the Golden Age of Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr who made a world-changing invention, and LADY CLEMENTINE about Winston Churchill’s wife. Her latest book — THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE — focuses on the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie and the role it played in shaping her into the world’s most successful novelist
Today I am posting on the Harlequin Trade Publishing 2020 Fall Reads Blog Tour for Historical Fiction. I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE CHANEL SISTERS by Judithe Little. This is an intriguing view of the beginnings of the famous Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and her brand through the eyes of her younger sister, Antoinette.
Below you will find an author Q&A, an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Author Q&A
Q: I didn’t know Coco had a sister. How did you come up with the idea for your novel?
A: When I read in a biography of Coco that she had a sister, I knew right away I wanted to write about her. A lot of books have been written about Coco, but none have been written from the point of view of Antoinette. I thought that the sister of Coco Chanel might have an interesting story to tell, and it turns out that she did.
Q: Explain the staying power and interest in (anything) Chanel?
A: I think that Chanel is the symbol for reinvention and the idea that you can be whoever you want to be and that has a universal appeal.
Q: Do you plan your books in advance or let them develop as you write?
A: They are planned in the sense that they’re based on historical events so there’s already a timeline in place and I know generally what happens. The characters themselves develop as I write.
Q: Have you ever had a character take over a story, and if so, who was it and why?
A: I’ve had minor characters take over small parts of a story such as the baron at Royallieu (I attribute the kite dance idea to him). Arturo also seemed to take over the scenes he was in and tell me what he was going to do instead of vice-versa.
Q: Which one of The Chanel Sisters’s characters was the hardest to write and why?
A: Julia-Berthe was the hardest to write because of the three sisters, she’s the one about whom the least is known.
Q: What does a day in the life of Judithe Little look like?
A: Busy! I’m a lawyer so during the day I take care of my law firm work and in the evenings I typically write or do other book-related activities. Mixed in is typical stuff like grocery shopping, errands, and driving my youngest who is a high school sophomore here and there.
Q: What do you use to inspire you when you get Writer’s Block?
A: This may sound strange but I rearrange furniture or shelves or redecorate in some way. Maybe it’s the new perspective but changing my surroundings seems to get the juices flowing again.
Q: Do you have stories on the back burner that are just waiting to be written?
A: I usually have one or two waiting in the wings.
Q: What advice would you give budding authors about publishing?
A: I think it’s important to have critique partners or a critique group. Mine has been invaluable to me. Persistence and thick skin help too.
Q: What was the last thing you read?
A: Bryn Turnball’s The Woman Before Wallis which I loved.
Q: Book you’ve bought just for the cover?
A: Susan Meissner’s Secrets of a Charmed Life because I loved the color of the green dress and the way the figure of the woman was interposed with the river and London. More recently, Jane Smiley’s Perestroika because it has a horse and the Eiffel Tower on the cover–two of my favorite things.
Q: Tell us about what you’re working on now.
A: I’m working on a new novel that takes place in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s and is told from the perspective once again of someone close to Coco Chanel but who was famous in her own right.
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About the Book
For fans of The Paris Wife, The Only Woman in the Room, and The Woman Before Wallis, a riveting historical novel narrated by Coco Chanel’s younger sister about their struggle to rise up from poverty and orphanhood and establish what will become the world’s most iconic fashion brand in Paris.
A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph—and the sisters who changed fashion forever
Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family at a young age, they’ve grown up under the guidance of nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.
The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a boutique business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns.
But the sisters’ lives are again thrown into turmoil when World War I breaks out, forcing them to make irrevocable choices, and they’ll have to gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.
THE CHANEL SISTERS by Judithe Little is a historical fiction novel featuring the Chanel sisters and is told from the perspective of the youngest sister from the time they are placed in a convent orphanage until her death in 1921. The author gives us a fascinating look at the early establishment of a new fashion style and the birth of a business empire run by women in a society dominated by men.
With the death of their mother and abandonment of their father, the three Chanel sisters, Julia-Berthe, Gabrielle and Antionette are placed in a convent orphanage. As they grow up under the strict rules of the nuns, they always believe they are destined for “something better”.
Antionette is the youngest sister and the story of their early lives is told from her perspective. From the freedom, but poverty of their aging out of the convent to the hard work to learn and establish a business of their own, the author vividly portrays the French society and class system they had to struggle against. The sisters refused to settle for being members of the merchant class but continually strived to be financially independent. With the rise of “Coco” Chanel and the Chanel brand, Antionette is by her sister’s side assisting in the business as it expands and continually fighting against the strictures placed on women in early the 1900’s society.
I found this book difficult to put down. I find the story of any woman who beats the odds to succeed against not only personal, but societal strictures and norms very interesting. Ms. Little did a great job of bringing the sisters and the time period to life even if liberties were taken for the story. Coco’s story goes on for another 50 years, but this book and part of her life ends with the death of the narrator.
I recommend this historical fiction for a unique look at the Chanel rags to riches story.
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Excerpt
IN LATER YEARS, I WOULD THINK BACK TO THAT COLD MARCH day in 1897 at the convent orphanage in Aubazine.
We orphelines sat in a circle practicing our stitches, the hush of the workroom interrupted only by my occasional mindless chatter to the girls nearby. When I felt Sister Xavier’s gaze, I quieted, looking down at my work as if in deep concentration. I expected her to scold me as she usually did: Custody of the tongue, Mademoiselle Chanel. Instead, she drew closer to my place near the stove, moving, as all the nuns did, as if she were floating. The smell of incense and the ages fluttered out from the folds of her black wool skirt. Her starched headdress planed unnaturally toward heaven as if she might be lifted up at any moment. I prayed that she would be, a ray of light breaking through the pitched roof and raising her to the clouds in a shining beam of holy salvation.
But such miracles only happened in paintings of angels and saints. She stopped at my shoulder, dark and looming like a storm cloud over the sloping forests of the Massif Central outside the window. She cleared her throat and, as if she were the Holy Roman Emperor himself, made her grim pronouncement.
“You, Antoinette Chanel, talk too much. Your sewing is slovenly. You are always daydreaming. If you don’t take heed, I fear you will turn out to be just like your mother.”
My stomach twisted like a knot. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from arguing back. I looked over at my sister Gabrielle sitting on the other side of the room with the older girls and rolled my eyes.
“Don’t listen to the nuns, Ninette,” Gabrielle said once we’d been dismissed to the courtyard for recreation.
We sat on a bench, surrounded by bare-limbed trees that appeared as frozen as we felt. Why did they lose their leaves in the season they needed them most? Beside us, our oldest sister, Julia-Berthe, tossed bread crumbs from her pockets to a flock of crows that squawked and fought for position.
I pulled my hands into my sleeves, trying to warm them. “I’m not going to be like our mother. I’m not going to be anything the nuns say I’m going to be. I’m not even going to be what they say I can’t be.”
We laughed at this, a bitter laugh. As the temporary keepers of our souls, the nuns thought constantly about the day we would be ready to go out and live in the world. What would become of us? What was to be our place?
We’d been at the convent for two years and by now were used to the nuns’ declarations in the middle of choir practice or as we worked on our handwriting or recited the kings of France.
You, Ondine, with your penmanship, will never be the wife of a tradesman.
You, Pierrette, with your clumsy hands, will never find work with a farm woman.
You, Hélène, with your weak stomach, will never be the wife of a butcher.
You, Gabrielle, must hope to make an adequate living as a seamstress.
You, Julia-Berthe, must pray for a calling. Girls with figures like yours should keep to a nunnery.
I was told that if I was lucky, I could convince a plowman to marry me.
I pushed my hands back out of my sleeves and blew on them. “I’m not going to marry a plowman,” I said.
“I’m not going to be a seamstress,” Gabrielle said. “I hate sewing.”
“Then what will you be?” Julia-Berthe gazed at us with wide, questioning eyes. She was considered slow, “touched,” people said. To her everything was simple, black and white like the tunics and veils of the nuns’ habits. If the nuns said it, we would be it.
“Something better,” I said.
“What’s something better?” Julia-Berthe said.
“It’s…” Gabrielle started but didn’t finish.
She didn’t know what Something Better was any more than I did, but I knew she felt it just the same, a tingling in her bones. Restlessness was in our blood.
The nuns said we should be content with our station in life, that it was God-pleasing. But we could never be content where we were, with what we had. We came from a long line of peddlers, of dreamers traveling down winding roads, sure that Something Better was just ahead.
JUDITHE LITTLE is the award-winning author of Wickwythe Hall. She earned a BA in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. She grew up in Virginia and now lives with her husband, three teenagers, and three dogs in Houston, Texas. Find her on Instagram, @judithelittle, and on Facebook, facebook.com/judithelittle.
THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE by Marie Benedict is a historical fiction book based around the famous author’s eleven day disappearance in December of 1926. I have loved Agatha Christie mysteries since I was first introduced to and read about the brilliant Hercule Poirot when I was just thirteen years old. There was not a doubt after reading and watching anything related to Agatha Christie that I would be reading this book and I can say I was not disappointed.
The puzzle of Mrs. Christie’s missing eleven days has persisted to this day. Mrs. Christie herself even skips that period in her life in her autobiography. Ms. Benedict has taken on the task of imagining what happened to Agatha at this time in her life and failing marriage. The story is written intertwining two timelines; one immediately following Agatha’s disappearance and the investigation that follows told by Archie Christie and the other starting as the young Agatha falls in love with the dashing Colonel Archibald Christie before WWI and takes the couple up to the disappearance told by Agatha Christie.
I enjoyed this story immensely! I have never personally believed in the amnesia story or the story that the disappearance was for publicity for her new book. Mrs. Christie was a woman with a brilliant mind and Ms. Benedict’s historical fiction rendition makes so much more sense to me. In the 1920’s, women had so little power and I love to think of Agatha getting her due before her divorce. (PLEASE NOTE: if you have not read “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” this book does give away the ending.)
I highly recommend this compelling historical fiction featuring Agatha Christie!
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a commercial litigator at two of the country’s premier law firms. While practicing as a NYC lawyer, Marie dreamed of a fantastical job unearthing the hidden historical stories of women — and finally found it when she tried her hand at writing. She embarked on a new, thematically connected series of historical fiction excavating the stories of important, complex and fascinating women from the past with THE OTHER EINSTEIN, which tells the tale of Albert Einstein’s first wife, a physicist herself, and the role she might have played in his theories. She then released CARNEGIE’S MAID, the story of a brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie toward philanthropy, followed by the NYTimes bestseller THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM, the tale of the Golden Age of Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr who made a world-changing invention, and LADY CLEMENTINE about Winston Churchill’s wife. Her latest book — THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE — focuses on the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie and the role it played in shaping her into the world’s most successful novelist
THE FUHRER’S ORPHANS: A Moving and Powerful Novel Based on True Events by David Laws is set around the year 1940 at the beginning of WWII and is the type of historical fiction I love to read.
The two main characters had been on opposite ends of the Kindertransport which transported refugee children from Prague to England before the Nazis shut down all escape of refugees from the Third Reich. Unknown to each other, they are about to come together in a critically important secret mission in Munich.
Claudia Kellner is an elementary teach in Munich who is living with several secrets. She is approached by Erika Schmidt, a mother of a student in her class, to see if she would be willing to help with children who are hiding in “The Maze”, a deserted and overgrown portion of the railroad yard in Munich. Erika does not know of Claudia’s past and that Claudia will do anything to save children.
Lieutenant Peter Chesham comes from a well-to-do family and has lived a flamboyant and adventurous life. Having been trained as a railroad engineer and having family in Switzerland, he is picked to covertly enter the Third Reich to destroy a new railroad engine designed by an American defector that could change the balance of the war in Hitler’s favor.
Peter and Claudia cross paths when Peter is told by his underground connections that the destruction of the engine could also destroy the abandoned railyard and kill the children in hiding. A plan is devised to get the children out of Munich while also still accomplishing the destruction of the new engine.
Will Peter, Claudia and their underground connections be able to pull off the ultimate escape to save the children, while still accomplishing their mission to destroy the engine that could change history?
I really enjoyed this story and the growing suspense surrounding the ultimate fate of the children juxtaposed against the intrigue surrounding the destruction of the engine all while Peter and Claudia grew to trust each other and reveal their personal secrets. For me, there was a slight lag in the beginning of the story as all of the information about the Breitspurbahn rail was explained, but it quickly took off after all the characters where put into place.
An entertaining and compelling read for all of us who crave stories set in this time-period with a different twist than what we have read before. I am looking forward to checking out other books by this author, also.
Thanks very much to Bloodhound Books for allowing me to read this ebook prepublication.
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Author Bio
I’ve been a national newspaper journalist for many years but have always nursed the ambition to write novels about my favourite historical period – before, during and after the two world wars. And now with Exit Day I’m right up to date.
Everyone has to start somewhere – and my first “journalistic” job was operating an old-fashioned plug-in telephone switchboard for a City of London financial weekly. When I’d cut off too many calls and they’d sent me on my way, I managed to secure reporting stints around the London suburbs of Wembley, Southall, Hayes and Harrow. I followed this by switching to sub-editing at an evening paper in Shropshire and then joining the Daily Express in Manchester and London.
I guess it really all began as a young teenager when I published my own magazine called Opinion, printed illicitly by a cousin on her firm’s Gestetner duplicator. It sold to school chums and I remember getting told off for writing critical pieces on the Korean War, not quite the done thing at the time.
I’ve also written for and edited magazines dealing with film, medicine, travel and finance. Highlights were interviews with Jack Higgins, Marti Caine and Robert Ludlum.
To help put my children through fee-paying schools I did a part-time bulk trucking job for a local bakery, much to the amusement of my colleagues. The bumps and mishaps along the way were many. Like the 8,000 apple tarts which hit the road – literally.
All worth the effort! I’m now the proud father of a judge and a headmaster.
My leisure pursuits have included driving for a village bus group in Suffolk, crewing and driving a steam locomotive hauling The Blues Express in Poland, rambling in Canada, the UK and Majorca (don’t try the last one, far too hot!), some gliding and a scary lesson at the controls of a helicopter – a birthday present from my son.
Plus a life-long interest in modern history, the Second World War in particular, and why we had to fight it. Hence the novel MUNICH, a key step on the run-up to that catastrophic conflict.
