Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE KEEPER OF HIDDEN BOOKS by Madeline Martin on this HTP Books Blog Tour. This is a story for all who love books and believe in the ultimate power of their words and ideas.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving.
With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club. She and her dearest friend never surrender their love of reading, even when Janina is forced into the newly formed ghetto.
But the closer Warsaw creeps toward liberation, the more dangerous life becomes for the women and their families – and escape may not be possible for everyone. As the destruction rages around them, Zofia must fight to save her friend and preserve her culture and community using the only weapon they have left – literature.
THE KEEPER OF HIDDEN BOOKS by Madeline Martin is a tour de force historical fiction novel featuring a group of friends in Warsaw, Poland during WWII inspired by the true story of the public and underground libraries that continued throughout the war. This is a must read for all lovers of books who believe books have the power to uplift, nurture, embolden, and provide escape during the worst of times.
Zofia Nowak and Janina are inseparable best friends bound by the love of books. This novel follows their lives, their families’ lives, and friends during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw during WWII. It is a poignant look at the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi’s in the Warsaw Jewish ghetto and against the general Polish population in general. Hitler looked down on all Poles and wanted them eliminated or used as slave labor.
Zofia not only worked with Polish Resistance, but also worked in the library warehouse to save as many books and historical documents as possible from the Nazi book banning and burning. Janina and her family are Jewish and end up in the ghetto, but both continue to find ways to share books, remain friends and resist.
This story is beautiful and inspirational as well as so hard at times. There is a reason autocrats ban and burn books because the words and ideas are powerful. Books give hope, teach empathy, and spread ideas that can change hearts and minds. This book has an inspiring friendship at its center, mentions wonderful literary novels throughout, and reminds us to be ever vigilant of those who seek to ban and destroy books and history.
I highly recommend this marvelous historical fiction novel!
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About the Author
Madeline Martin is a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance with books that have been translated into over twenty-five different languages.
She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), two incredibly spoiled cats and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves research and travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany.
Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France.
Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort. Seizing the smallest glimmer of hope of finding Giles alive, she returns to France. If Madeleine can stop just one Nazi, it will be the start of a valiant path of revenge.
Though her perseverance, defiance, and heart will be tested beyond imagining, no risk is too great for a brave wife and mother determined to fight and survive against inconceivable odds.
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Elise’s Thoughts
The Paris Assignment by Rhys Bowen is a story of love and war, bitterness and brutality, bravery, and forgiveness. The setting moves from England to France to Australia.
The heroine Madeline Grant is sent to study overseas at the Sorbonne in Paris. There she meets charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. After the Christmas holiday, she defies her stepmother and returns to Paris to live with Giles. After finding out she is pregnant Giles eventually does the right thing and marries her even though his mother has cut him off from any financial assistance. When Oliver, their child is born, he sends Madeline and Oliver back to England to escape Nazi occupied France, while Giles remains in his homeland to join the Resistance. After the Nazi bombings of London starts Madeline puts Oliver on a train to find safety in the English countryside. Unfortunately, the Nazis bombed the train and Oliver is reported dead.
The harrowing adventure starts for both Oliver and Madeline. He is thought to be an orphan and is shipped off to Australia while she joins an elite English group of French speaking women who are trained as spies and sent to France. Both she and Oliver must endure abuse and torture. The redeeming quality is how Giles mother rescues Madeline and helps her to escape back to England. After the war Madeline is sent undercover to Australia to find and bring to justice the abusive Nazis. Readers will find her as a courageous mother and resistor who wants to honor her husband’s and son’s memory. She perseveres, is brave, defiant, and a risktaker.
This is an enthralling story of love, survival, sacrifice, and betrayals. Although a rather dark story there is a happy ending which leaves readers hopeful for the future.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Rhys Bowen: I have been very conscious of these women during WWII who risked their lives in the war effort with a survival rate of 25%. I thought what would make someone do it? These young girls of eighteen, where an incredibly diverse group who were incredibly brave. Then in 2019 we rented a house in Fontainebleau France and became aware of the history regarding the Nazi occupation. I went back last fall to fill in the little bits of details for the story.
EC: How would you describe Madeline?
RB: She grew from a naïve English girl to someone who became a fierce mother tiger. She was sheltered, practical, and honest. She feels lost because she is not welcome at home. Madeline is looking for love, adventure, and to belong. But as she matures, she has an inner strength.
EC: How about Giles?
RB: Readers see him through Madeline’s eyes. At first self-centered but he steps up to marry her when she is with child. He becomes very brave and honorable.
EC: How about the relationship between Madeline and Giles?
RB: At first, he sweeps her off her feet but then she becomes the complement to him. He is an idealist, believes in equality. They are perfect for each other when they meet. At the beginning readers see him as a bad playboy. As the relationship grows, they become each other’s true love. At the beginning he was self-centered and domineering as evidenced by the quote, ‘In France people marry for family expectations with a mistress for companionship.’ But after a few years he begins to rely on her strength and stability. The turning point is when he defied his family to marry her.
EC: How would you describe the child of Madeline and Giles, Oliver?
RB: Very smart, brave, very observing, and is not outgoing. While going to school in England, as with most young schoolboys, he was picked on because he sounded different and did not fit in. He is the typical only child that grows up around adults, learning to interact in an adult sort of way. He endured the hardships. People see him as a complex character. Because he changed badges with this other guy his bio says he came from the backstreets of London, yet he appears very well educated. It is war time, so he becomes a small casualty with no one double checking on the discrepancy.
EC: There is a difference between Madeline’s stepmom Eleanor and Giles mom?
RB: I was asked ‘why do I have in each of my books a cold, horrible woman?’ My own mother and grandmother were lovely. But I went to a strict girl’s schools where all the teachers were nasty and spiteful older women. Eleanor is self-centered, uncaring, and very cold. She did not marry for love and is jealous of the fact that the father loves Madeline but does not love her. The father is very much like Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, shuts himself up in the library.
Giles mother is caught up in the class system, coming from a very important family. She expected her son to behave as she wants. In the beginning her reputation is more important to her than the relationship with her son. But later in the book, after helping to rescue Madeline she confesses that she has gone to Paris to see them, but then still refused to be a part of the family. Giles mother is brave, proud, and spirited, whereas Eleanor never changes.
EC: What is true versus false?
RB: It has a lot of real stuff. The English were anti-French. Also true, every house built a shelter. I was like Oliver having a complete panic attack during the blitzkrieg. My husband told a story how he saw a senseless act of violence when a German pilot machine gunned a bunch of people at a bus stop, so it was not unheard of that they bombed an English civilian train.
Children were moved to Australia, a British colony. They volunteered to take British orphans and children of family members who wanted their own children to be safe. Regarding the Australian nuns I read these first-person accounts of children sent to these farms controlled by the nuns. They were spiteful and cruel. They sought out a way to make money. When the children get old enough, they got a finder’s fee from farmers which was like indentured servants.
EC: Next books?
RB: The book coming out this time next year has a working title, An Abandoned Place. It is about three little girls during WWII who were put on a train to be evacuated and were never seen again. Move forward to 1968 where a girl thinks she has been to a village now abandoned. The protagonist is a journalist who decides to investigate.
March 2024 will be the next Molly Murphy book I write with my daughter. It is titled In Sunshine or In Shadow. It takes place in the Catskills where the Jewish bungalows are.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
“The Hanni Winter series “by Catherine Hokin has four books, in order they are The Commandant’s Daughter,The Pilot’s Girl,The Girl In The Photo, and Her Last Promise. The first two books have a dual plot line. The interesting premise involves serial killers as well as a reckoning of what happened in Nazi Germany. The time period is in the late 1940s. The third and fourth books center on the characters’ lives, how they were affected by living through the horrors of the Nazis, and can they move forward. The timeline is in the 1950s to 1960s.
Hanni Winter, the heroine, who is the daughter of the Concentration Camp Theresienstadt’s commandant wants to show the world his wickedness. She feels guilty because she enjoyed the benefits of the Nazi lifestyle. Freddy Schlussel is the Jewish German detective who falls for Hanni but does not realize her real background. Renny is Freddy’s sister who was reunited with him after the war and has the attitude ‘Never Again.’ Leo is the son of Hanni and Freddy who makes readers think a lot about the German morals or lack of. Reineris Hanni’s father, someone who is pure evil, trying to bring back The Third Reich.
All these books will leave a lasting impression as readers become totally absorbed with the characters. These stories will pull at people’s heartstrings and have them take a journey with the characters as they gain courage, achieve redemption, and show the fortitude of the human spirit.
Be aware that these books have only an English publisher, but people can get them in an e-book format or paperback through Amazon.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: The idea for the series?
Cathy Hokin: It is a four-book series. We first meet Hanni in the first book, at the age of ten in 1933 and by the end of the last book she is about 39. The overriding arc has Hanni trying to fulfill the promise she made to herself to bring her father to justice using her photography skills. The idea for the series started because I am interested in photography. I consider myself good, but my father was brilliant. My brother is a professional photographer. Sometimes they don’t seem to realize about the dangers. I wanted to start off with a young photographer, Hanni, in Nazi Germany and then see her development. This last book is set during the Cold War.
EC: The role of photography?
CH: Hanni feels she uses it to tell a story. She grows up in a Nazi household. I have always been fascinated by war photographers and how they walk forward into danger. They have a different way of framing the world. While I am all about words, they are all about pictures. I put in this book quote, “With her heart and feelings and eyes she took pictures of the real Germany.” I wanted the idea of Hanni using the camera to show what it is really like underneath the photograph because the Nazis used photos to manipulate things.
EC: How would you describe Hanni?
CH: Curious, comes from a broken family, very loyal, and guilt ridden. She feels huge guilt because she thinks she did not do enough to stop the Nazis. Her father taunts her with this in the first book, telling her she never published her pictures or joined the resistance.
EC: Is Hanni a complex character?
CH: She has a massive guilt for being a part of the silence, for being complicit. Yet, when offered a scholarship to photography college by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, she took it. She is not just black and white. Metaphorically she shut the windows and did not shout. She did do an inner search and decided to rectify. She does have a strong sense of justice. She is incredibly naïve about what was being done at the Theresienstadt Camp by her father. She goes on this big learning curve.
EC: How has Hanni grown from book one to book four?
CH: She acquired forgiveness. Hanni had to come to terms that she must take responsibility for what happened in her life. She went along with the Nazi lifestyle. She eventually realizes she had complicity in what happened. Both she and Freddy, the hero, had to learn to be kind. By book four she gained a lot of strength.
EC: Why the murders in the first two books?
CH: In the first book, The Commandant’s Daughter, Freddy meets Hanni at the site of a crime because she is photographing it. This was a way for them to meet. Hanni was a photographer and Freddy was a German detective. As with all photographers Hanni was detailed, obsessed, and can ‘home in on something’ and take a bunch of photographs from different angles. She saw things with an eye Freddy did not see. The book is set between 1945 – 1947. Book 1 and Book 2 are about serial killers.
EC: How would you describe her father Reiner?
CH: A dreadfully horrible individual, a complete narcissist. Pure evil, ruthless, vengeful, and likes to bait and humiliate Hanni. He does not have a moral compass. In book 1, 2, and 3 she tries to bring him down but fails. He ruins her life in book 3. It becomes Hanni versus Reiner but she does not have the skills or contacts to bring him down. He always ends up hurting everyone around her who tries to help her.
EC: Do you want your readers to question how much could an individual have done to stop what was going on?
CH: She should have done more. I did admire the people who did try to do something. In Germany post 1945 no one wants to speak about the war. In the 1940s and 1950s there was no dialogue about what happened. The reason I set the last book in the 1960s is because the Eichmann trial changed everything. This spurred Hanni to do something against her father.
EC: The moral dilemma of the characters?
CH: In book 1, Freddy was a detective yet had to stop a serial killer from murdering Nazi officers. I deliberately wanted the first case of Freddy to be challenged. He had to figure out if he wanted the killer to be caught or to allow the murderer to rid the world of more Nazis. He faced the dilemma of what his job demanded of him and what his conscience demanded. Hanni had to come to grips on what she did during the war and tell Freddy. She did feel guilty all the time but had to realize there is a difference between guilt and responsibility, owning up to what she did. Even the serial killer in the first book had a moral dimension, thinking he did the correct thing by getting rid of people he thought let the army down. Tony, the serial killer in the second book, grieved in a twisted way. All these characters think they are doing the right thing in their strange universe.
EC: But Hanni did try to do the right thing?
CH: In the Concentration Camp Theresienstadt she did take photographs to document what was really happening and show the world. She very much wanted to stand witness, but it took her a long time to get the courage to do it. Her father, a Nazi commandant, is pure evil, and taunted her by saying she did nothing with the photographs for a long time and never joined the resistance. There was a gap between what she wanted to do and the action to do it. She had to get that strength of character.
EC: Leo, Hanni’s child, asked all the correct questions in the book 4?
CH: The book quote by Leo, “Because you say all those things, but I do not know if they are true. Everyone repeats the same number all the time. Six Million Jews were murdered in the war. But then they say nobody in Germany knew what was happening. How can that be right. It does not make sense. Why didn’t somebody stop them? Why didn’t he (Reiner) go to jail at the end of the war? Why aren’t the jails bursting with killers?”
EC: How would you describe Freddy’s sister, Renny, in the books?
CH: She is angry, lonely, and fearful. She becomes a Zionist. The third book is all about her. She was a confused and horrified little girl, yet she recovered. She never trusted those in Germany after the war. Israel became Navana for many. She is the opposite of Freddy who puts his head down and ignores a lot, even after the war. He wants to build a future and not be stuck on the past. She feels it means nothing has changed. She knows how bad it is and wants to fight. She ends up being able to overcome her anger and project it for good. She was a counterpoint to Freddy. He was culturally Jewish but not religiously Jewish. Renny says “I don’t want to live in a pact suitcase anymore.” It was a common feeling for those Jews still in Germany among her age group, that Germany can never be safe. She wanted to move to Israel and did not consider herself German like Freddy did. Even today the right wing is getting stronger in Germany.
EC: What about the relationship between Hanni and Freddy?
CH: She has lied to him and until book four does not come clean with Freddy. This is what ruptures them. He had a lack of trust. There are layers that prevent them from getting together, which they need to overcome. They need to work out their problems. When they first got together, they were not ready for each other. Both had to mature and realize the relationship was worth holding on to. Originally the series was to finish in 1953 ten years earlier than it originally does. But that timeline did not work because they were not mature enough to forgive each other for all the mistakes. In their early twenties they had a very black and white view of the world whereas in the fourth book, in their forties they made the transition.
EC: Next book?
CH: It will be out in January 2024, a stand-alone. It is set in WWII Germany in the early 1970s and 1980s in America. I had three events taking place, partly in America during the 1970s and partly in Nazi Germany. I explore the Office of Special Investigations that was established in 1979 to investigate Nazis living in America. I also bring in Operation Paperclip that had Nazis working on the American missile program, and during Nazi Germany the Lebensborn breeding program. The story is set between 1939 and 1980. There will be a lot of story lines. Although it will be published only in England, all my books are available as paperbacks in the States via Amazon, that includes this series and the book coming out in January.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for WOMEN OF THE POST by Joshundra Sanders on this HTP Books Summer 2023 Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book description, 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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Book Description
For fans of A League of Their Own, a debut historical novel that gives voice to the pioneering Black women of the of the Six Triple Eight Battalion who made history by sorting over one million pieces of mail overseas for the US Army.
Inspired by true events, Women of the Post brings to life the heroines who proudly served in the all-Black battalion of the Women’s Army Corps in WWII, finding purpose in their mission and lifelong friendship.
1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women’s houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it’s up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she’s recruited to join the Women’s Army Corps—offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world—Judy jumps at the opportunity.
During training, Judy becomes fast friends with the other women in her unit—Stacy, Bernadette and Mary Alyce—who all come from different cities and circumstances. Under Second Officer Charity Adams’s leadership, they receive orders to sort over one million pieces of mail in England, becoming the only unit of Black women to serve overseas during WWII.
The women work diligently, knowing that they’re reuniting soldiers with their loved ones through their letters. However, their work becomes personal when Mary Alyce discovers a backlogged letter addressed to Judy. Told through the alternating perspectives of Judy, Charity and Mary Alyce, Women of the Post is an unforgettable story of perseverance, female friendship and self-discovery.
WOMEN OF THE POST by Joshunda Sanders is an emotionally charged historical fiction based on the true story of the WAC 6888th Central Postal Battalion during WWII. This was the first all-Black, all female Army battalion formed and sent overseas to England to expedite the backlog of wartime mail delivery to the troops.
This novel features several black women’s lives beginning in 1944, but the main protagonist is Judy Washington. She lives with her mother in the Bronx and seeks daily work on the Bronx Slave Market cleaning houses for white women for barely any money. One day Judy is approached by an impressive Black woman in uniform and informed about the Army WAC program. She joins not only to send real money home to her mother, but also to hopefully discover what happened to her husband who went to war, but she has not heard from in several months.
The story follows Judy into the Army and introduces her to lifelong friends as they all are on the path of self-discovery. Besides Judy, you are introduced to Stacy, who is big and built strong who works the family farm in Missouri, Bernadette, who works with her mother in a beauty salon in Chicago, and Mary Alyce who discovers her father was a black man after joining the Army and being raised white. There is also a sub-plot intertwined throughout about the two commanding officers of the Battalion and their love for each other.
There is so much beauty and dignity in the portrayal of these women as they face prejudice and discrimination, not only in the South, but everywhere. I read so much about WWII and yet I had never heard of these women and their service. I am so glad I know about them now.
This is a captivating and memorable historical fiction novel that I highly recommend!
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Excerpt
One
Judy
From Judy to The Crisis
Thursday, 14 April 1944
Dear Ms. Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke,
My name is Judy Washington, and I am one of the women you write about in your work on the Bronx Slave Market over on Simpson Street. My husband, Herbert, is serving in the war, so busy it has been months since I heard word from him. It is the fight of his life—of our lives—to defend our country and maybe it will show white people that we can also belong to and defend this place. We built it too, after all. It is as much our country to defend as anyone else’s.
All I thought was really missing from your articles was a fix for us, us meaning Negro women. We are still in the shadow of the Great Depression now, but the war has made it so that some girls have been picked up by unions, in factories and such. Maybe you could ask the mayor or somebody to set us up with different work. Something that pays and helps our boys/men overseas, but doesn’t keep us sweating over pails of steaming laundry for thirty cents an hour or less. Seems like everyone but the Negro woman has found a way to contribute to the war and also put food on the table. It’s hard not to feel left behind or overlooked.
Thank you for telling the truth about the lives we have to live now, even if it is hard to see. Eventually, I pray, we will have a different story to tell. My mother always says she brought us up here to lay our burdens down, not to pick up new ones. But somehow, even if we don’t go to war, we still have battles to fight just to live with a little dignity.
I’ve gone on too long now. Thank you for your service.
Respectfully,
Judy Washington
Since the men went to war, there was never enough of anything for Judy and her mother, Margaret, which is how they came to be free Negro women relegated to one of the dozens of so-called slave markets for domestic workers in New York City. For about two years now, her husband, Herbert, had been overseas. He was one half of a twin, her best friend from high school, and her first and only love, if you could call it that.
Judy had moved with her parents from the overcrowded Harlem tenements to the South Bronx midway through her sophomore year of high school. She was an only child. Her father, James, doted on her in part because he and Margaret had tried and tried when they were back home in the South for a baby, but Judy was the only one who made it, stayed alive. He treasured her, called her a miracle. Margaret would cut her eyes at him, complain that he was making her soft.
The warmth Judy felt at home was in stark contrast to the way she felt at school, where she often sat alone during lunch. When they were called upon in classes to work in groups of two or three, she excused herself and asked for the wooden bathroom pass, so that she often worked alone instead of facing the humiliation of not being chosen.
She had not grown up with friends nor had Margaret, so it almost felt normal to live mostly inside herself this way. There were girls from the block who looked at her with what she read as pity. “Nice skirt,” one would say, almost reluctantly.
“Thanks,” she’d say, a little shy to be noticed. “Mother made it.”
Small talk was more painful than silence. How had the other Negro girls managed to move with such ease here, after living almost exclusively with other Negroes down in Harlem? Someone up here was as likely to have a brogue accent as a Spanish one. She didn’t mind the mingling of the races, it was just new: a shock to the system, both in the streets she walked to go to school and to the market but also in the halls of Morris High School.
Judy had been eating an apple, her back pressed against the cafeteria wall when she saw Herbert. He was long faced with a square jaw and round, black W.E.B. Du Bois glasses.
“That’s all you’re having for lunch, it’s no wonder you’re so slim,” he said, like he was continuing a conversation they had been having for a while. Rich coming from him, with his lanky gait, his knobby knees pressing against his slacks.
A pile of assorted foods rose from his blue tray, tantalizing her. A sandwich thick with meat and cheese and lettuce, potato chips off to the side, a sweating bottle of Coke beside that. For years, they had all lived so lean that it had become a shock to suddenly see some people making up for lost time with their food. Judy finished chewing her apple and gathered her skirt closer to her. “You offering to share your lunch with me?”
Herbert gave her a slight smile. “Surely you didn’t think all this was for me?”
They were fast friends after that. It was easy for her to make room for a man who looked at her without pity. There had always been room in her life for someone like him: one who saw, who comforted, who provided. Her father, James, grumbled disapproval when Herbert asked to court, but Herbert came with sunflowers and his father’s moonshine.
“What kind of man do you take me for?” James asked, eyeing Herbert’s neat, slim tie and sniffing sharply to inhale the obnoxious musk of too much aftershave.
“A man who wants his daughter to be loved completely,” Herbert said. “The way that I love her.”
Their courting began. Judy had no other offers and didn’t want any. That they had James’s blessing before he died from a heart attack and just as they were getting ready to graduate from high school only softened the blow of his loss a little. As demure and to herself as she usually was, burying her father turned Judy more inward than Herbert expected. In his death, she seemed to retreat into herself the way that she had been when he approached her that lunch hour. To draw her out, to bring her back, he proposed marriage.
She balked. “Can I belong to someone else?” Judy asked Margaret, telling her that Herbert asked for her hand. “I hardly feel like I belong to myself.”
“This is what women do,” Margaret said immediately.
The ceremony was small, with a reception that hummed with nosy neighbors stopping over to bring slim envelopes of money to gift to the bride and her mother. The older Negro women in the neighborhood, who wore the same faded floral housedresses as Margaret except for today, when she put one of her two special dresses—a radiant sky blue that made her amber eyes look surrounded in gold light—visited her without much to say, just dollar bills folded in their pockets, slipped into her grateful hands. They were not exactly her friends; she worked too much to allow herself leisure. But some of them were widows, too. Like her, they had survived much to stand proudly on special days like this.
They settled into the plans they made for their life together. He joined the reserves and, in the meantime, became a Pullman porter. Judy began work as a seamstress at the local dry cleaner. Whatever money they didn’t have, they could make up with rent parties until the babies came.
Now all of that was on hold, her life suspended by the announcement at the movies that the US was now at war. The news was hard enough to process, but Herbert’s status in the reserves meant that this was his time to exit. She braced herself when he stood up to leave the theater and report for duty, kissing her goodbye with a rushed press of his mouth to her forehead.
Judy and Margaret had been left to fend for themselves. There had been some money from Herbert in the first year, but then his letters—and the money—slowed to a halt. Judy and Margaret received some relief from the city, but Judy thought it an ironic word to use, since a few dollars to stretch and apply to food and rent was not anything like a relief. It meant she was always on edge, doing what needed doing to keep them from freezing to death or joining the tent cities down along the river.
Her hours at the dry cleaner were cut, so she and Margaret reluctantly joined what an article in The Crisis described as the “paper bag brigade” at the Bronx Slave Market. The market was made up of Negro women, faces heavy for want of sleep. They made their way to the corners and storefronts before dawn, rain or shine, carrying thick brown paper bags filled with gloves, assorted used work clothes to change into, rolled over themselves and softened with age in their hands. A few of them were lucky enough to have a roll with butter, in the unlikely event of a lunch break.
Judy and Margaret stood for hours if the boxes or milk crates were occupied, while they waited for cars to approach. White women drivers looked them over and called out to their demands: wash my windows and linens and curtains. Clean my kitchen. A dollar for the day, maybe two, plus carfare.
The lists were always longer than the day. The rate was always offensively low. Margaret had been on the market for longer than Judy; she knew how to negotiate. Judy did not want to barter her time. She resented being an object for sale.
“You can’t start too low, even when you’re new,” Margaret warned Judy when her daughter joined her at Simpson Avenue and 170th Street. “Aim higher first. They’ll get you to some low amount anyhow. But it’s always going to be more than what you’re offered.”
Everything about the Bronx Slave Market, this congregation of Negro women looking for low-paying cleaning work, was a futile negotiation. An open-air free-for-all, where white women in gleaming Buicks and Fords felt just fine offering pennies on the hour for several hours of hard labor. Sometimes the work was so much, the women ended up spending the night, only to wake up in the morning and be asked to do more work—this time for free.
Judy and Margaret could not afford to work for free. Six days a week, in biting winter cold that made their knees numb or sweltering heat rising from the pavement baking the arches of their feet, they wandered to the same spot. After these painful experiences, day after day all week, Judy and Margaret gathered at the kitchen table on Sundays after church to count up the change that could cover some of the gas and a little of the rent. It was due in two days, and they were two dollars short. Unless they could make a dollar each, they would not make rent.
Rent was sometimes hard to come up with, even when James was alive, but when he died, their income became even more unreliable. They didn’t even have money enough for a decent funeral. He was buried in a pine box in the Hart Island potter’s field. James was the only love of Margaret’s life, and still, when he was gone, all she said to Judy was, “There’s still so much to do.”
Judy’s deepest wish for Margaret was for her to rest and enjoy a few small pleasures. What she overheard between her parents as a child were snippets and pieces of painful memories. Negroes lynched over rumors. Girls taken by men to do whatever they wanted. “We don’t need a lot,” she heard Margaret say once, “just enough to leave this place and start over.”
Margaret’s family, like James’s, had only known the South. Some had survived the end of slavery by some miracle, but the Reconstruction era was a different kind of terror. Margaret was the eldest of five children, James was the middle child of eight. A younger sibling left for Harlem first, and sent letters glowing about how free she felt in the north. So, even once Margaret convinced James they needed to take Judy someplace like that, it felt to Judy that she always had her family in the South and the way they had to work to survive on her mind.
Judy fantasized about rest for herself and for her mother. How nice it would be to plan a day centered around tea, folding their own napkins, ironing a treasured store-bought dress for a night out. A day when she could stand up straight, like a flower basking in the sun, instead of hunched over work.
Other people noticed that they worked harder and more than they should as women, as human beings. Judy thought Margaret maybe didn’t realize another way to be was possible. So she tried to talk about the Bronx Slave Market article in The Crisis with her mother. Margaret refused to read a word or even hear about it. “No need reading about my life in no papers,” she said.
Refusing to know how they were being exploited didn’t keep it from being a problem. But once Judy knew, she couldn’t keep herself from wanting more. Maybe that was why Margaret didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to want more than what was in front of her.
Herbert’s companionship had fed her this kind of ambition and hope. His warm laughter, the way she could depend on him to talk her into hooky once in a while, to crash a rowdy rent party and dance until the sun came up, even if it got her grounded and lectured, was—especially when James died—the only escape hatch she could find from the box her mother was determined to fit her future inside. So, when Herbert surprised her at a little traveling show in Saint Mary’s Park, down on one knee with his grandmother’s plain wedding band, she only hesitated inside when she said yes. It wasn’t the time to try and explain that there was something in her yawning open, looking for something else, but maybe she could find that something with Herbert. Her mother told her to stop wasting her time dreaming and to settle down.
At least marrying her high school buddy meant she could move on from under Margaret’s constant, disapproving gaze. They had been saving up for new digs when Herbert was drafted—but now that was all put on hold.
The dream had been delicious while it felt like it was coming true. Judy and Herbert were both outsiders, insiders within their universe of two. Herbert was the only rule follower in a bustling house full of lawbreaking men and boys; Judy, the only child of a shocked widow who found her purpose in bone-tiring work. Poverty pressed in on them from every corner of the Bronx, and neither Judy nor Herbert felt they belonged there. But they did belong to each other, and that wasn’t nothing.
Joshunda Sanders is an award-winning author, journalist and speechwriter. A former Obama Administration political appointee, her fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Hedgebrook, Lambda Literary, The Key West Literary Seminars and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Women of the Post is her first novel.
Adele Astaire served up smiles and love both on and off the stage—with and without her also famous brother Fred Astaire— along with a determined young dancer with rags-to-riches dreams.
A spirited rising stage star…
Adele Astaire was a glittering, glamorous star, dancing with her brother, Fred, endearing herself to audiences from New York to London. But although she is toasted by royalty and beloved by countless fans, Adele Astaire has dreams of a loving husband and a houseful of children. And when she meets Lord Charles Cavendish, her wishes may just come true—but at what cost?
A determined young dancer …
Ever since Violet Wood could walk she’s wanted to dance on the London stage. Befriended by Adele, filled with ambition, she is more than willing to make the sacrifices it will take to becomes a star herself, and her rags-to-riches hopes are within reach. But the road to fame is never easy.
Two women with unquenchable spirit …
From the fast-paced world of roaring 20s New York to the horrors and sacrifice of wartime London, Adele’s and Violet’s lives intertwine, and each must ask themselves is fame worth the price you must pay?
STARRING ADELE ASTAIRE by Eliza Knight is an engaging historical fiction/biographical historical women’s fiction novel featuring dual narratives alternating between one half of the famous brother sister dancing duo of Fred and Adele Astaire and an up-and-coming London West End dancer with dreams of stardom. This story is a wonderful mix of historical fact and fiction that brings these two women and their era to life.
Adele Astaire was the older sister of Fred Astaire and his first partner in dance, vaudeville, and theater productions. Adele was full of life and always laughing and endearing herself to audiences. While she loves the success and fame they have achieved, she also yearns for the life of a wife and mother.
Violet Wood is from the poor West End of London and has forever been told her washerwoman mother that she should quit trying to rise above her station, but Violet continues to practice dance on her own as she works as a cocktail waitress in the theaters. On an audition, she is befriended by Adele Astaire and proves she has the drive and ambition to become a star.
This is an emotional story of two strong women, one historical and one fictional who work, sacrifice, and strive for what they want. The timeline of this story is from the “Roaring Twenties” through WWII in both the UK and New York. There were several times in this story I was completely heartbroken for Adele and yet she was able to pick herself back up and start again. The triumphs and tragedies of both women’s stories intertwined to depict the ups and downs of their choices, but also the lack of choices due to the times. It is evident there was in-depth research done on Adele’s life and the use of Violet as a counterpoint the author was able to bring the decades depicted to life.
I highly recommend this captivating biographical historical fiction novel!
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About the Author
Eliza Knight is an award winning, USA Today and international bestselling author. Her love of history began as a young girl when she traipsed the halls of Versailles and ran through the fields in Southern France. She can still remember standing before the great golden palace, and imagining what life must have been like. Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, her weekends were filled with visits to museums, and historical reenactments. Escape into history for courageous heroines, irresistible heroes and daring escapades. Join Eliza (sometimes as E.) on riveting historical journeys that cross landscapes around the world. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and Novelists, Inc., the creator of the popular historical blog, History Undressed, a co-host on the History, Books and Wine podcast and a co-host for the true crime podcast, Crime Feast.
While not reading, writing or researching for her latest book, she tries to keep up with her three not-so-little children. In her spare time (if there is such a thing…) she likes daydreaming, wine-tasting, traveling, hiking, staring at the stars, watching movies, shopping and visiting with family and friends. She lives atop a small mountain with her own knight in shining armor, three princesses, two very naughty Newfies, and a turtle named Fish.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER: A Sinner’s Cross Novel by Miles Watson on the Coffee and Thorn Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
On the eve of what will be known as The Battle of the Bulge, the survivors of Sinner’s Cross are scattered all over Europe. Halleck, the tough Texan who drives men like cattle, finds himself surrounded in the snow-blanketed forests of the Eifel Mountains riding herd on greenhorn soldiers; Breese, the phony hero with a chip on his shoulder the size of Rushmore, embarks on a bloody mission of redemption behind enemy lines; Cramm, the one-eyed, one-armed German staff officer, tries to balance duty against his lust for vengeance against those who crippled him. Three men separated by war will once again converge…in The Very Dead of Winter.
THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER: A Sinner’s Cross Novel by Miles Watson is a historical fiction book I was very excited to be able to read for this blog tour. This is the second Sinner’s Cross book and while it is a continuation of the three main soldier protagonists lives from the first book, Sinner’s Cross, this book is easily read as a standalone. I recommend them both highly!
In this book, three survivors of the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest are converging in the Ardennes Forest in the dead of winter for what will be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Sgt. Halleck is battle-hardened and once again finds himself leading men into battle with the enemy behind every tree, Lt. Breeze gets sent back to the front and finds himself battling the Nazis looking for redemption, and Cramm, a German staff officer, who will fight to the death but no longer believes in Hitler and his fanatics.
The writer’s depiction of this horrific battle and the three diverse paths the main characters are on felt so realistic. Even knowing the outcome of this historical battle, I kept turning the pages because I was so invested after following these characters in two books. The moral questions about war and loss of life are ever present, but unlike the feeling of senseless loss of life in the first book and this was the largest and bloodiest battle during WWII, this battle was a turning point in the war for the Allies and the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
I highly recommend this historical fiction novel and I believe both books in the Sinner’s Cross series are exceptional!
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About the Author
Miles Watson is one of the most successful independent writers of his generation. He holds undergraduate degrees in Criminal Justice and History and a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, and served in law enforcement for nearly ten years before moving to Los Angeles, where he has worked on over 200 episodes of television and half a dozen feature films. But his first and last passion is writing. His various works have won the following:
CAGE LIFE – Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Runner Up (2016): Zealot Script Magazine “Book of the Year” (2017); Best Indie Book Award – Mystery & Suspense (2018)
KNUCKLE DOWN – Writer’s Digest S.P.B.A. Honorable Mention (2019); Best Indie Book Award – Suspense (2019)
DEVILS YOU KNOW – Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing Finalist (2019)
THE NUMBERS GAME – Pinnacle Book Achievement Award – Novella – (2019)
NOSFERATU – Pinnacle Book Achievement Award – Novella – (2020)
SINNER’S CROSS – Best Indie Book Award – Historical Fiction – (2019); Book Excellence Award – Action (2020); Literary Titan Book Award – Gold Medal (2020); Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards – Finalist (2020); Readers Favorite Five Stars (2021)
THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER – Literary Titan Book Award – Gold Medal (2022); Pinnacle Book Achievement Award (2022); Book Excellence Award Finalist (2023)
