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A photo of Ceslawa’s stark face confronts us on the cover of this slim but impactful novel, based on her real life. In 1942, she was a 14-year-old Catholic girl living in a Polish village. The Germans invaded, upended everyone’s life and sent many, including her, to Auschwitz. A photographer took pictures of prisoners there and when Tuck saw Ceslawa’s photo, she pieced together what slim facts she could find about her, and expanded the story into what she imagined her experience would have been. Dreadful, of course, and her subject only lasted 3 months there before she died. The book draws on archival material like lists of villagers’ names and footnotes that add verisimilitude. I found it especially compelling because the atmosphere echoes what’s going on now right around us: heinous, capricious actions from someone who often sounds like a ranting Hitler.
Family vacations can be Petrie dishes for heating up dysfunction and the ones Keru and Nate devise are far from rejuvenating. Keru’s family is Chinese, and Nate’s parents who are white don’t accept her. The two sets of in-laws visit separately, but none are happy with the arrangements. The couple’s huge dog blunders around, a literal as well as metaphorical obstacle. Planned excursions run aground; for instance, why does Nate’s mother need to see all 5 lighthouses on Cape Cod? When Nate’s wild-card brother Ethan shows up with a surprise girlfriend who rapidly decamps, Keru finally sets boundaries that may just see them into a functional future. Mordant wit, and only a few furnishings were harmed in the making of this story.
In this riveting historical novel, the bust of Hathokarke, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, is stolen from the Met in 1978. Curator Charlotte is devastated. Her research on the subject was slated to show the power Hathokarke wielded as a female pharaoh, toppling current beliefs. Young Annie, who’d just gotten a job working for fashion magnate Diana Vreeland there, is fired. She’d unwittingly let lose a boxful of live moths at the Met’s big fashion gala and in the pandemonium, the artifact disappeared. Action toggles between1978 and 1936, where Charlotte did her field work in Egypt. Charlotte and Annie team up to solve the case. In Cairo they discover all manner of skullduggery, justice is served, and things work out well for both. Vivid and well-researched.
Subtitled: A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood. At four, Penny has to leave the only home she’s ever known to go off with a forbidding man who speaks a foreign language. He’s her father, come to claim her. His household includes a classic wicked stepmother and half-siblings. Penny ends up doing most of the household and child-minding tasks in a highly restrictive Hungarian atmosphere which she dubs Budapest, California. She escapes into early marriage, but it’s frying pan into the fire because her husband becomes a fanatical born-again Christian. It takes more than a decade to extricate herself, but she finally arrives at a fulfilling life (whew) in the Bay Area. A complicated tale told with heart-wrenching simplicity and candor. I wanted to give her a call (she lives in Mill Valley) and congratulate her.
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