Another Look at Year 5 – Greater Naples Jewish Book Festival

FLORIDA WEEKLY SUPPORTS THE

GREATER NAPLES JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL

FOR FULL FLORIDA WEEKLY OVERVIEW, CLICK HERE

 

Beginning in November and concluding in March, the 2019-20 Greater Naples Jewish Book Festival offers a dazzling series of author events, building upon the highly regarded and jam-packed 2018-19 season. A project of the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples in cooperation with the Jewish Book Council, the festival comprises 12 events at several venues, covering 19 books with 22 visiting authors.

Many of the events will feature two authors who share a theme or genre; others will have a dynamic solo presenter. One program will showcase a book created jointly by three authors, all of whom will be on hand.

For ticket information, author bios and book synopses, visit www.jewishbookfestival.org. For questions and general information, call 239-263-4205 or email fedstar18@gmail.com.

 

It’s all here:  https://naples.floridaweekly.com/articles/greater-naples-jewish-book-festival-3/

New crime thriller offers a dead senator, dirty election politics, and pending environmental disaster

Let Justice Descend, by Lisa Black. Kensington Books. 320 pages. Hardcover $26.00.

Cape Coral resident Lisa Black’s fifth Gardiner and Renner novel only leaves one waiting for the next one. You can’t have too much of a good thing. Do you like mystery plots to start off with a bang? Well, here goes. It’s election time in Ohio and U. S. Senator Diane Cragin has been busy campaigning for re-election, doing whatever else she can to influence the power brokers and the voters. With three days to go, she is about to enter her home when she steps on a device designed to electrocute her. And it works perfectly.

Senator Cragin has plenty of enemies, but could it be that the person running against her would have the most incentive to get her out of the way? Now her party has to choose a substitute candidate immediately. Hmm, a self-created opening for a prepared opportunist? 

Cragin’s chief of staff, the estimable Kelly Henessey, shows the proper degree of sadness at the loss of her mentor, but she seems even more worried about possibly being out of a job. Henessey is a great minor character, with all kinds of psychological quirks.

The investigating team includes not only Maggie Gardiner as crime scene investigator (CSI), but also someone from the medical examiner’s office and two police force detectives. The latter are partners Tom Riley and Jack Renner – whose penchant for vigilante justice is like a chain around Maggie’s neck. She knows about his propensities, and her own career is likely to blow up if anyone finds out what she is hiding from the department. Otherwise, Jack is a darn good detective.

Another motive for knocking off the senator is what’s discovered in her safe: a huge fortune in cash. Was Cragin planning a lavish retirement? How did she accumulate this money? Who knew about it?

Readers soon learn that the senator may have been instrumental, and was no doubt at least an influential force, in a highly competitive game underway in the city: repurposing out of use properties in downtown areas. Author Black gives us a close-up view of the wars that go on among speculative investors, government regulators, and political grifters. Exploring these forces at work leads Black to populate her scenes with well -drawn secondary characters.

These include Joe Green – a powerful, seasoned administrator and politician about to become the Democratic candidate running for the senate position and David Carlyle – a young, dedicated EPA inspector in charge of overseeing plans for a water intake facility (crib) on Lake Erie. In addition, there is investigative reporter Lori Russo, who is not only on top of the political shenanigans in Cleveland, but has also been sniffing for any information about the vigilante murders (Jack Renner’s crimes). She knows that police officer Rick Gardiner, Maggie’s ex, is working on that case. . . .

To read the full review, as well as an interview with the author (photo at left), click on Florida Weekly – Let Justice Descend  The review appears in the October 30, 2019 Fort Myers Florida Weekly; the October 31 Bonita Springs, Palm Beach, and Venice editions; and the November 7 Naples and Charlotte County editions. The interview is on the following page in the Fort Myers edition, after the review.

“Old Bones: A Novel,” by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

• Grand Central Publishing.  384 pages. Hardcover $28.00.

• Reviewed by Philip K. Jason

An historical thriller about skeletons in the snow — and the closet.

Partners in crime-writing Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have had an amazing career, both as collaborators and as solo scribes. They are best known for the Pendergast series that reached its 18th installment with the universally praised Verses for the Dead.

In their latest supercharged thriller, Old Bones, they are shifting gears by standing behind a new protagonist, a curator/archaeologist named Nora Kelly. At once youthful and experienced, Nora is strongly attracted by the shocking request of a handsome historian.

Clive Benton needs a team to help him prepare for and execute a startling expedition into rough western wilderness. He believes he has some clues to investigate the fabled Donner Party, a legendary group of seekers who perished via starvation, impossible weather, and violence in 1847.

Benton approaches the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute with his reasonably convincing story about having the key to locating a great treasure of gold coins, a find somehow connected to the Donner misadventure. What he has is the diary of a young woman named Tamzene, who was one of the Donner Party family.

A deal with the institute is made, and personnel from that organization, along with a support team, is set in motion. The authors paint the logistics of the venture in eloquent detail, and they manage to make those plans and details fascinating. The team’s work must be done on a carefully created schedule that considers climate, weather, and just how much horseback riding, mountain climbing, meal-making, and walking can be done in the available time.

The topography holds dangers, as well. Because their search area is federal property, it comes under the jurisdiction of the FBI. And, as readers will find out, that’s a very good thing.

Why? Because it allows for the introduction of another major female character just as engaging as Nora. FBI Agent Corrie Swanson, a self-confessed former “foulmouthed, purple-haired goth,” who is anxiously awaiting the end of her probationary period under the tutelage of Special Agent Hale Morwood.

Preston and Child

She yearns to be assigned a real case. Suddenly, she has one, and it brings her into contact with Nora, Nora’s team, and a series of ongoing problems with the Archaeological Institute’s venture.

Not only does it become necessary to understand the long-ago crimes of the Donner Party catastrophe, but it also involves crimes of greed during the troubled present expedition. Given their different personalities and responsibilities, there is a running friction between Nora and Corrie that softens in the late stages of the novel — hinting, perhaps, at some future Preston & Child thriller that will bring them together again.

Meanwhile, Corrie has the death of one of the expedition’s participants to investigate. And there will be more to come. Too bad she must spend so much of her time on horseback, a mode of transportation that gives Nora no trouble at all.

Corrie’s confrontation with Dr. Fugit, president of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute and Nora’s boss, is a scene that shows Corrie maturing on the job — holding her own against the offensive woman’s fear-mongering manipulation — and not losing her temper. . . .

To see the full review as it appears in the Washington Independent Review of Books, click here: Old Bones

Inspired by actual events, this novel for all readers should become a young adult classic

My Real Name is Hanna, by Tara Lynn Masih. Mandel Vilar Press. 208 pages. Trade paperback with flap $16.95.

In her brilliant, poetic novel that reads like Holocaust testimony, Tara Masih presents a family’s horrifying journey to escape ultimate victimhood. In her early teens as the narrative begins, Hanna Slivka, as if keeping a diary, takes her future readers through the steps of her family’s struggle with Nazi oppression. 

In important ways a coming-of-age story, this novel begins by describing the situation for Jews in the small town (shtetele) of Kwasova as Nazi forces cross the border into Soviet-occupied Ukraine. Kwasova is a community that had been Austrian and Polish; its residents can’t be sure of what it will become next. This is especially true of its Jewish community, which before Hitler’s tyranny could at least get along with its non-Jewish neighbors.

The attempt to relocate and/or annihilate the Jews begins with orders to brand them. Hannah’s father tells the family: “The SS issued orders to the Ukrainian police and the Jewish Council. Jews are now being ordered to register and to make their own armbands, a blue Mogen Dovid, our Jewish star, sewn on to a white background.”

As the status of even substantial Jewish families falls, the father, Abram, realizes that maintaining housing and obtaining food will soon become impossible. It is also clear that hiding in barns, which worked for a while, won’t work anymore: their fellow townspeople will betray them.

Money and cherished valuables are disappearing. Now the Jewish families of the town must somehow disappear as well. The victims, in public opinion and via effective propaganda, have been transformed into the cause of the war that is threatening all of Europe.

Through her teenage narrator, Ms. Masih shows the material and psychological effects of these circumstance on the members of this family and another family with which they make joint plans for survival. They need to act quickly before that are marched into ghettos or simply murdered “in plain sight” to underscore SS power.

There is a feature of their lives that is especially moving. Facing disaster, these Jewish families manage to observe their religion’s precepts and holy days. They hide the synagogues torah and other important items. Such dedication becomes a source of strength.

How does a family hide in a forest? After walking a great distance from Kwasova, the come across a run-down isolated forestry station that will become their home. It is built from logs, and the gaps are filled with moss. They had carried with them as much as they could; now her father Uncle Levi make a round trip to and from the town for much-needed tools and other supplies. Now they can modify the cabin to fit their needs. They clean, discover a small stream with clear water that will serve their need for hygiene and food preparation.

They must arrange their days to avoid detection of their lantern light and smoke from the fire, and of course they must find the wood to feed the fire.

In constant fear, the family members support one another and search for sustenance. They obtain nutrition from the wild vegetation. Sometimes they can scrounge a chicken, yet most of the time they are starving.

Tara Lynn Masih

Abram risks occasional trips to the shtetele for flour and kerosene. The snow drifts are a big obstacle, and he must avoid leaving tracks in the snow. Networking with others, he establishes a coded way of leaving messages on a tree. It’s a silent, secret language. It helps with a much-needed commodity – news about what’s going on in the world around and beyond them. News of Hitler’s war.

The people in this nomadic entourage of relatives represent a spectrum of age groups, but it is Hanna who holds our attention as she helps take care of her younger siblings and as she muses about building her relationship with Leon Stadnick, who is two years her senior. They pray to make it to their next birthdays. These children are growing up fast and taking on adult tasks and risks.

Fearing that the Germans will eventually find them in the forest, Abram decides to take advantage of news about habitable caves, the gypsum caves of Kwasova, where darkness is even “darker than dark.” Making a safe haven out of the caves is even more difficult and dangerous than living in the forest cabin, but it serves the group’s purposes as a place to survive the Holocaust, which in this case means until the Russians return to Kwasova and drive the Germans out. However, the eventual allied victory does not promote, politically or psychologically, a vision of return to the once familiar home territory. The Slivka family and some of those who hid out with them in the forest and the caves decide to build new identities and lives in the United States.

From beginning to end, the story told is one of a cooperative effort. The family is aided in many ways by some members of their Kwasova community. Among these people are the Cohan twins, Pavel and Jacob, who are always showing up with the news or goods that the Slivka’s need. Both early and late in the story, their dearest neighbor, Alla Petrovich, is of great support and encouragement to the family. She carries the “righteous Christian” role in the story, and her colored eggs seem to make miracles possible. On the other hand, few of the townspeople show any desire for the possible return of their former neighbors.

St. Augustine writer Tara Lynn Masih blends diligent research, blazing imagination, and sophisticated literary technique in this transformational narrative. Marketed as a Young Adult novel, it can engage and educate readers all across the age spectrum.

 

This novel can be richly explored with the help of an easily available Reader’s and Teachers Guide. Go to: http://taramasih.com/my-real-name-is-hanna-readers-guide.pdf

Here are some of the accolades that this superb novel has received:

Julia Ward Howe Award

Florida Book Award~Gold Medal

Foreword INDIES Award~Gold Medal

Skipping Stones Honor Award

Litsy Award Nominee

A Goodreads’ Best Book of the Month~YA

 

This review appears in the November 2019 issues of Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Greater Naples), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties), and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee). It was reprinted in several editions of Florida Weekly on November 20 and 21, 2019. Here is a link: Florida Weekly – My Real Name is Hanna

Journalist pokes some fun at Florida’s official symbols

Roaring Reptiles, Bountiful Citrus, and Neon Pies, by Mark Lane. University Press of Florida. 152 pages. Hardcover $19.95.

What do you hope to get from your reading materials, information or laughs?  If you want both, and you are curious about Florida, this is the book for you. Writing as an amused and sometimes perplexed Florida partisan, Mr. Lane zeros in on the symbols that define the state and the legislative process of how they come into being. In nineteen hilarious and often wacky vignettes, the author presents a wealth of information.

With something often approaching a straight face, he keeps his tongue in his cheek. It’s a winning performance. 

Many of the chapters benefit from Mr. Lane’s decision to surround or imbed the story of how a symbol became the Official Florida this-or-that with bits and pieces of his own personal story. His long-developed sense of Florida culture and his knowledge of state and local politics affords many opportunities for him go embellish the bare bones facts about how the selection for officialdom occurred. The story-telling is always pleasant, even when the facts themselves often are not.

Here are some of Mr. Lane’s chapter subtitles that give a taste of what readers are in for:

“Welcome to the Sunshine – Not the Alligator – State,” “Welcome to the Land of the Manatee Mailboxes,” “Ponce de Leon Schlepped Here,” “The Mockingbird Will Not Be Mocked, Tree Huggers,” and “In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash).”

Mark Lane photo by Cindi Lane

The chapters are usually headed by the official language of incarnation. Some are straightforward, following the pattern of “Key lime pie is designated as the official Florida state pie – Florida Statute 15.052.” The elevation of the orange to reign as the state fruit is easy to anticipate, but the ways in which Mr. Lane embroiders and personalizes the story will surprise you. Elsewhere one learns about Myakka fine sand, credentialed as the official Florida state soil. (Is this the kind of exercise we want state legislators to spend time on?)

You get the idea.

Each one of Mark Lane’s chapters is a little gem, a kind of inspired dose of the ridiculous. The actual statute that elevates the sabal poem (aka the sabal palmetto palm and/or cabbage palm) as the state tree of Florida (even though it’s actually a tree-like plant) is just the kind of discovery for which Mr. Lane cannot resist witty remarks and satiric story-telling. He includes some laughs at the expense of the sabal palms post-hurricane trimmings. “It’s the poodle-cut of palms.”

. . . .

For the rest of the review in October 17, 2019 Bonita Springs Florida Weekly,  info about Mark Lane, and an interview click here:  Florida Weekly – Roaring Reptiles. Then continue to review’s second page. Also appears in Palm Beach and Venice editions, on October 23 in Fort Myers edition, and on October 24 in  Naples and Charlotte County editions. 

“The Ventriloquists: a Novel,” by E. R. Ramzipoor

• Park Row Books. 544 pages. Hardcover $26.99

A zany crew pulls a fast one on the Third Reich in this surprising tale based on actual events.

This astonishingly original debut novel draws upon a little-known piece of WWII history and the text of a journalistic hoax. It pays homage to the human spirit that can thrive in the midst of the cruelest oppression.

“The Ventriloquist” begins with, and often returns to, the need for someone to ask and answer questions. The questioner, a woman named Eliza, has heard something about this historical event and, fascinated, has spent 12 years tracking down a witness or participant. Now she has found one, an old lady named Helen.

While author E.R. Ramzipoor often returns to the present-time conversation between Eliza and Helen, Helen’s story (or Eliza’s transcription thereof) reaches into a past in which the hoax was hatched and executed.

We are introduced to the main players: Their names, nicknames, personalities, and experiences are slowly, vividly revealed. For the most part, the narrative is set in occupied Brussels, with some scenes in the small Belgian town of Enghien. The principal character is the main instigator of the grand charade, a journalist with a comic flair named Marc Aubrion (nicknamed “The Jester”). He is an intuitive planner and improviser.

Among the other six key characters are prostitute/smuggler Lada Tarcovich; David Spiegelman, who can write in the voice and persona of others; and Gamin, a girl disguised as a boy, who sets fires, creates confusion, picks pockets, and carries out risky tasks in service to Aubrion’s scheme.

Ramzipoor author photo by Sherry Zaks

They and others form part of the resistance movement that wants to block the omnivorous Reich, as well as Russian expansion. It is late 1943, and resistance forces are stalling until the Allies arrive.

To implement their plan for replacing an edition of the Nazi-propaganda-filled Le Soir with their own send-up version, Faux Soir, the conspirators need paper, ink, typewriters, typesetting machinery, a distribution system, money, hiding places, and storage space.

They must also fool, among others, August Wolff, the regional Nazi paramilitary officer. Working under Himmler, Gruppenführer Wolff is somehow fooled by this motley crew, whose members agree to aid the Axis with their journalistic and other talents. Their skill at deceiving him is another kind of ventriloquism.

The novel explodes with released suspense every few pages as the chapters and their subdivisions shift from character to character, setting to setting, and obstacle to obstacle. Eventually, the critical needs of the Faux Soir scheme are met, but not without close calls and tragic losses. . . .

To read the entire review, as it appears in the Washington Independent Review of Books, click here:  Ventriloquists

Best-selling novelist Andrew Gross is featured speaker at Greater Naples Jewish Book Festival

Review article by Phil Jason, co-chair of Jewish Book Festival and Florida Weekly book columnist

The Fifth Column: A Novel, by Andrew Gross. Minotaur Books. 336 pages. Hardcover $28.99.

This fast-paced historical thriller has all the ingredients of another best seller for its prolific and popular author. In the late 1930s, the concept of a fifth column, a seditious group forming in the United States in league with this country’s enemies or potential enemies, gained quite a bit of attention. Anti-war sentiment was high, and it raised the possibility of anti-government action. 

Many groups, especially after France fell, admired Hitler and fascism. They admired authoritarian leadership. U. S. security agencies recognized the threat, but agents’ hands were tied without solid proof of law-breaking.

Worst of all, the more sophisticated Fifth Column groups were adept at fitting in, keeping a low profile, and passing for loyalists while planning to undermine the country or its principles.

There were plenty of pro-Nazi rallies, anti-Semitic rants, and New York area neighborhoods in which children wore swastikas.

Andrew Gross describes such an atmosphere, and he finds the perfect premises and plot line to bring it to life in a most horrifying fashion.

We meet the central character and main narrator, Charles Mossman, in a New York bar continuing a pattern of drinking way too much while pondering the political stories of the day. His drinking had brought Charlie low, costing him his job as a history professor at Columbia University. A minimally observant Jew, Charlie is dismayed about the popularity of figures like Father Coughlin and Joseph McWilliams who stirred up trouble and spread hate. He is also grieving over the loss of his twin brother Ben, who died fighting the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Worse yet, Charlie had been unfaithful to his wife Liz, who has become the main breadwinner.

He hopes to regain her trust and to never lose it again. His worst nightmare is failing their six-year old daughter Emma.

This night, even more disaster for Charlie comes to pass. Drunk beyond sense or stability, he manages to get into a fight and accidentally murder a teenager.

Two years later, when a clean Charlie is released from jail, determined to claw his way back to respectability, just about all of Europe is at war. Charlie has a lot to prove to regain the faith of his wife, who has changed the last name on the door from Mossman to Rubin. When he hears his daughter’s voice calling “Daddy,” he knows more than ever how much he has missed.

It’s clear that Liz is a long way from trusting him. She is not willing to have him return to their home. Charlie understands; he is hoping – over time – to make amends and prove himself worthy.

Liz agrees to allow Charlie to visit with Emma twice a week after school, but he must leave before Liz returns home. Liz has Mrs. Shearer helping her out minding Emma, and Liz is working to support the tenuously balanced family. There are also elderly neighbors, the Bauers, who have befriended Liz and Emma.

The novel shifts into a new gear when Charlie begins to feel that something is not quite right about the behavior of Trudi and Willi Bauer, who long ago established themselves as Swiss citizens of German heritage enjoying their senior years in the United States. They seem somehow too close to Emma, and she to them.

Charlie is also perplexed by their furtive-seeming visitors, whom they call “customers,” whom the Bauers invite on a regular basis. While it is no surprise that Emma has been developing something of a German vocabulary from her interaction with the Bauers, Charlie is shocked to hear his daughter use the word lebensraum, the oft-repeated justification for Germany’s military aggression.

When Charlie asks Emma what the word means, she responds, “the future.” Now he is further worried. His concern deepens when he notices, in the Bauer home, a strip of partially burned paper containing numbers that might be a secret code. Charlie is also troubled that nearby German bars hold meetings of groups like the German American Bund at which speakers offer Nazi propaganda.

Without much to go on, Charlie – on his lawyer’s advice and without Liz’s consent – takes his concerns to the local police station. He receives a patronizing response and little satisfaction. Given his background, this down-and-out ex-con doesn’t have a chance of getting a fair listening from the police officer, who at least pays him some attention.

The narrative builds in various ways. Charlie continues to tell his story, including his discovery of more suspicious items, including a hidden radio transmitter, in the Bauer home. Gross sets Charlie’s personal story against the larger story of the German advances in Europe and the growing anti-war sentiment in the United States. Although Charlie thinks he has an FBI-connected ally who can put his findings to good use, progress is iffy.

He gets no support from Liz, who acts like a divorce is forthcoming. In her view, Charlie’s behavior is ruining their chances for a normal family life. Hating to be seen in this light, Charlie is nonetheless driven to find the truth for his daughter’s sake – and for his country’s sake.

Charlie’s desperation makes him an easy mark for those who can read it and maneuver him to their advantage.

Andrew Gross masterfully portrays the details of how Charlie’s quest plays out, including the setbacks along the way, Charlie’s emotional predicament, and the forces arrayed against him. I can’t tell you more without giving too much away!

Book lovers can hear Mr. Gross discuss this blazing thriller – which imagines a carefully planned, deadly threat against the U. S. – on Tuesday, November 11 beginning at 1:00 at the Naples Conference Center. The book will be available for sale and signing. Also speaking at that event will be Steve Israel, author of Big Guns. Find details about the complete Festival series of events, along with an order form, author bios, sponsor news, and contact information at http://www.jewishbookfestival.org. Need an answer fast? Send an email to fedstar18@gmail.com or call the Federation office at 239.263.4205.

This review article first appeared in the October 2019  edition of the Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Greater Naples).