Enchanted Prose

Young Jewish and Italian immigrant women making a difference (Garment District, NYC; 1909-1911): In her first foray into historical fiction, self-published Canadian author of twenty-two novels, Heather Wardell, has humanized early 20^th century historical events and figures, forgotten or little known. Fiery Girls is a moving feminist story of the powerless fighting the powerful, of young immigrant women who once made the majority of clothing for women in America in NYC’s garment district, explaining why the city is considered either the leader or one of the Fashion Capitals of the World. 

That glamour wasn’t the world of the early 1900s when this story kicks off. A world in which two sixteen-year-old girls arrive at Ellis Island within weeks of each other in August 1909: one painfully alone, Jewish, from Russia at a time of violent anti-Semitic pogroms – Rosie; the other, Maria, comes to America with her brother Vincente, Catholics from Italy. Both girls are expected to earn enough money to support their families. Rosie to help hers escape persecution; Maria to return home. How long will it take them making $2.00 a week?

The two girls couldn’t be more opposite: Rosie painfully self-doubting, Maria full of self-confidence; Maria the beautiful one who relishes the attention, Rosie the innocent one who shies away from it. Rosie who’ll live in a tenement house with strangers; Maria and Vinnie came with an arrangement to live with a family friend, in a house of six with no room for eight. The girls end up becoming good friends when their paths cross working at the same infamous garment factory where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire occurred.

Warning: This disturbing five-minute video reenacts visually what the heart of the novel reenacts literally.

Maria is fiery, full of self-confidence. Fiery girls can do gutsy things, which you’ll see. (Vinnie’s role could fill an entire novel, as his laborious, dangerous work is helping to build the New York City subway system.)

When Rosie gets her first garment factory job, starvation wages and inhumane working conditions become clear. Moving from job to job, she lands at the catastrophic factory, at a time when young immigrant female workers mobilized to form the local union of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, which led to the largest strike by women in American history. Lasting three months, it was known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Their mission epitomized by the tragic fire and loss of 146 workers, mostly girls and women, that broke out on several floors of the ten-story Ashe Building, located further away from the Lower East Side near Washington Square Park. Still standing, the building’s name changed to the Brown Building, at NYU.

One of the strengths of the novel is the way the author doesn’t rush historical events, enabling us to feel as if we were there. Part I describes the immigrant arrival and settling-in process. Chaotic and traumatic scenes at Ellis Island are immersive and for Rosie’s story based on an historical figure: Cecilia Greenstone, who meets “legs shaking” Rosie on page one to interpret her Yiddish language, critical to deciding if she’ll be allowed into America. (Maria and Vinnie studied English before they came over.)

Jewish immigrants back then spoke Yiddish, so the prose is sprinkled with the language Jewish ancestors spoke. Words nostalgic to Jews remembering their grandmothers and grandfathers, likely to have also lived in the teeming Lower East Side in ghetto-like neighborhoods, perhaps believing America’s streets were “gold-paved.” Since one of the few trades European and Eastern European Jews had been permitted to do was sewing and tailoring, many garment sweatshops were located around their deplorable, cramped housing. Primed for a crush of skilled workers who’d propel an economy integral to the city’s culture at their expense.

Besides the historical interpreter who lets Rosie into the country, the oldest grassroots organization of Jewish Women in the US becomes her savior in the form of fictional character Julia. She meets Rosie on the Island to help find her a place to live and a job. Relieved she’s a woman since “men in uniforms never care about Jews,” Rosie later tells her that “if everyone is as kind as you, America “will be a wonderful place to live.” She’s about to find out that to make that happen she’s got to fight for it. This isn’t just her coming-of-age story, it’s immigrant history. 

Fictionalized Clara, a union leader, is a charismatic force inspiring garment workers like Rosie and Maria, in different ways based on their fiery and reserved personalities. She’s based on the real Clara Lemlich who led the fight against a male-dominated industry where “a girl’s not allowed to have an opinion.”

Part II is the fire and aftermath. The fire scenes are masterly done over a number of chapters where time stands still (versus chapters alternating in the two girls’ voices and move forward in time). You can feel the sheer panic when the fire breaks out: the desperation felt when the female workers can’t get out because the doors are shut; the height of the closed windows on the floors they’re trapped in; the firefighters trying to rescue them and contain the fire. The suspense of not knowing if Rosie and Maria miraculously made it out.

Not all is gloom and doom. There’s nickelodeon entertainment and Steeplechase Park on Coney Island. Die-hard New Yorkers and visitors to the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum will find their mouths watering at the mention of Yonah Shimmel’s Knish Bakery and Katz’s delicatessen that still endure, though little else does due to gentrification. Lost is the bustling, bursting atmosphere and spirit galvanized by communal hope and hard-living.

A word about the word shirtwaist, a term once used in the garment industry. It refers to a woman’s button-down blouse. Internet references compare it to a man’s dress shirt as it’s long-sleeved and can be white, but you can find plenty of fancier versions with puffy sleeves and feminine fabrics. Women were paid based on what piece of the shirtwaist they could sew, be it sleeves, “side seams and hems and buttonholes,” or “buttons and cuffs and lace or embroidery.” Pieces were paid based on difficulty; the more difficult and diverse, the more you were paid. Still, you might only advance to earning $5.00 or $6.00 a week, maybe $10 if you could excel at making the complete garment.

Midway through you may get frustrated with Rosie’s naivety, low self-esteem, and pinning her hopes on a “fella” she thinks is waiting for her back home. We must remember she’s only sixteen. Maria has a fella from back home on her mind too, but she doesn’t constantly question herself (far from it.) Be patient as the fire will soon consume you, as it does these two girls, co-workers and friends, making you realize Wardell intentionally showed us Rosie Before to appreciate her After.

The novel reminds us that while we wish history didn’t repeat itself, the 2000s story of the LA garment industry involving Asian and Hispanic immigrants tells us otherwise.

For countries around the globe who provide cheap labor for American goods, a recent fire at a Bangladesh garment factory is a gruesome reminder of the importance of fiery girls.

Lorraine

What makes a great artist? (Normandy, France; 2018 to present-day): “The source of art is love. I love life,” says eighty-three-year-old British artist David Hockney, “considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20^th century,” who’s once again jointly written a gorgeous book with long-time collaborator and close friend, Martin Gayford, British art critic and author of art books.

A profoundly pleasurable book – visually, literary, stylistically – it captures a new phase of the artist’s evolution, sparked in 2018 when he acquired a 17^th century farmhouse in Normandy, France. With its “higgledy-piggledy” architectural lines, La Grande Couer (“the big yard”) encompasses four acres of paradisiacal property, with flowering fruit trees and a garden, embracing the artist’s fascination with lines, angles, space, “surface and depths,” and all things nature.

“We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside of it,” says the prolific artist thriving in creative solitude during the pandemic. Hockney loves his new, charmed piece of the world nurturing “apple, pear, and cherry blossoms, plus the blackthorn and hawthorn” so much he began painting it when he arrived in the spring of 2019, in a series of panoramic drawings inspired by the remarkably preserved Bayeux tapestry displayed at the Bayeux Tapestry Museum near his home.

In over 100 works created in Normandy, he demonstrates his ability to express beauty in the ordinary things we take for granted, using saturated colors, “sumptuous blacks and subtler greens.” The paintings are marvelously life-affirming.

Watch this three-minute video to hear and see how the artist “notices” spring. You’ll feel the same uplifting spirit infused in the book:

Note: from here on in the artist will be referred to as DH, the art critic as MG, as that’s how they’re both referred to in this seamless, back-and-forth conversational style book. A hybrid of genres: part memoir, biography, art book, art history, epistolary, and dialogue between two male friends who’ve known each for “a quarter of a century.”

DH’s California swimming pool paintings of the ‘60s brought him fame. (Landscapes inspire him, having lived and painted in Hollywood Hills, Malibu by the sea, London, and England’s northern coast, Paris). He continued to paint different versions and perspectives of pools through the ‘70s and early ‘80s (one sold a few years ago for $90 million). He came on the art scene when pop artist Andy Warhol did, but wants us to know he’s not a pop artist. Instead, he describes his enduring fascination with water – be it pools, oceans, puddles, rain drops. He continues to present different versions and perspectives, this time of his bucolic landscape in northern France.

Join this brief tour at an art gallery in Paris to see some of his new artworks:

Spring Cannot Be Cancelled opens with a letter from DH to MG on the left side of the page, exuberant about his 2018 Normandy treasure. On the right side is MG’s introduction to his long-lasting relationship with the artist:

“We live in different places – and always have done – which gives our friendship a certain rhythm. For long periods, it is conducted at a distance, by email, phone calls, an occasional parcel – and a steady stream of pictures that arrive almost daily in my inbox. Sometimes, when he is an intense phase of activity, there may be three or four images together, showing a work in various stages of completion . . . Perspective, in this sense, affects not just the pictures and how they are made – a perennial topic for David and me – but all human affairs. We see every event, person, and idea from a certain vantage point. As we move through time and space, that position alters, and consequently our angle of vision.”

DH’s Normandy represents another intense phase of activity. The biography part, MG explains, is that in order “to understand Hockney’s new life in France . . . it is useful to know what he had been doing in the years and months before his move.” Which includes other images in the book by artists who influence him, such as cubists George Braque and Picasso (his favorite; here’s one explanation why), Rembrandt, Pieter Bruegel, Van Gogh, Katsushika Hokusai (also “fascinated by water”) and Monet, who made “beautiful marks that reveal the beauty in the world, so that when you’ve seen their pictures you see more of the world around you.” DH’s marks intend to do just that.

MG seems uniquely qualified to interpret this larger-than-life artist whose new paintings are done digitally, on an iPad, using a bamboo “reed pen” and multi-colored inks, in a technique evoking pointillism. We surmised that before DH says he “consciously decided” to make his “marks” or “dots” in that “French manner.” The artist is known for using a wide variety of media, techniques, materials, offering different “possibilities,” breaking new ground. Embracing state-of-the-art technology, he inventively seizes its advantages, enabling him to send MG unfinished works several times a day, which strikes as an unusual bond of artistic trust and respect.

Do most artists hold on to their work until ready? Maybe not, but there’s no doubt DH is unlike others. He’s not sure why he’s stayed famous for sixty years, begging the question asked as to what makes an artist great?

Art is so subjective, but artists are considered great when they create work singular from others. It’s impossible, in this reviewer’s opinion, not to be swept up by DH’s eye-squinting colors – brilliant greens, blues, reds, oranges, yellows – immediately recognizing his distinct view of the world (without having a “signature style”). His shade of blue is called Hockney Blue, more vibrant than Tiffany Blue. This aqua blue/turquoise/green color is everywhere: on the front and back cover, in his landscapes, his cardigan, even a bathrobe. Known for his “mismatched,” free-spirited attire, you can see the artist using this color while dressed to coordinate, with his dog Little Ruby by his side here: https://thamesandhudson.com/spring-cannot-be-cancelled-david-hockney-in-normandy-9780500094365#gallery

Besides Ruby, the artist is not completely alone. There’s his primary assistant and partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima (J-P), and a high-tech whiz, Jonathan Wilkinson. So many articles about the artist flood the Internet; this one discusses both assistants, and provides images of the outside and inside of the farmhouse: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2020-12-21.

Plenty of other friends and visitors want to drop by, but these days he’s more protective of his time given his age and how much he still wants to create. A rather extraordinary work ethic: gets up early in the morning, works in his studio and outdoors for hours, then can read a book that might be 700 pages long. His scholarship also impressive.

When MG asks whether he’s an “English artist, American artist, or these days a French artist?” he answers, “I’d always say it’s wherever I happen to be.”

This Normandy collaboration takes us to where the artist is now, a place we too might want to be. It doesn’t have to be a one-time reading and visual experience. My copy sits on a living room table, because, as MG writes, art is an “aesthetic thrill” that “enriches life.”

Lorraine

A 20^th century mission of travel, love, art, and journalism inspired by a trailblazing 19^th century female journalist who broke a world record (Paris, Venice, Austria; 1937): They’ve done it again! Bestselling historical fiction authors Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb have once again collaborated on an historical novel that sweeps you away. This is the second of the duo’s combined efforts reviewed here (see https://enchantedprose.com/meet-me-in-monaco/) that reflects a synergy and brand that promises to charm.

Though not all can be charming given the novel’s 1937 timeframe when Hitler’s blitzkrieg plans were palpable, yet he hadn’t – yet – invaded the three countries the novel is set in. (Austria was the earliest occupied, in 1938.) We’re made aware of the impending peril through the journalistic lens of Maddie Sommers, a budding journalist who dresses “like a man” and is fiercely independent, contrasting with her make-no-waves, finely dressed sister Clara. Estranged for the past year since their father died, they’re brought together by their beloved, bohemian-spirited, wealthy, dying grandmother Violet, who asks them to deliver three letters – in Paris, Venice, and Vienna – to say goodbye to three people who meant the world to her, unknown to the sisters at the time.

Honoring Violet’s three wishes for three months of travel is a testament to love and family. When they arrive at each of the destinations, they can open her tender instructions that explain why each person matters so much to Violet, who writes beautiful missives about her memories, loves, and the historical context.

Clara and Maddie used to be so close. In their hearts they still are, but the journey is fraught with disagreements and rivalries.

Violet lives in a seaside estate on East Hampton’s South Fork of Long Island, New York. The richest of the richest. Expected to still be alive when Clara and Maddie return, she may take up the least number of words and chapters (written in alternating voices), yet her zest for life is ever-present and totally delightful. The sisters spent privileged childhoods here. Their mother is essentially out-of-the-picture. Violet runs this show, full of surprises.

She’s thought of everything to make her granddaughters’ journey as luxurious, inspirational, and state-of-the-art as possible. Irresistible for them, and for us. While she has three wishes for three special people in her life, her fourth is to bring Clara and Maddie back together before she departs. Transporting them and us to three great and different European cities, the novel “glistens” and “sparkles” like the sun and the landscape by the Atlantic Ocean does.

Pay attention to the historical figure mentioned on page 1 – Nellie Bly, the groundbreaking woman who had a major influence on journalism. Bly is inspiration for the novel, Violet’s ambitious mission, and Maddie’s journalistic passion. Clara’s passion is Art.

Nellie Bly’s voice and spirit are introduced in the epigraph:

“I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.”

Nellie Bly, in turn, was inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. Violet’s dear friend, she told her “we must sometimes leave the places and people we love the most so we can return to them and love them all the more.”

Violet told Clara and Maddie all about Nellie, Aunt Nellie to them. Maddie, the most affected by her daring, is constantly aware of her European surroundings, keeping up with the news and writing observations in a journal. Her goal is to become a highly respected journalist who makes a difference, like Nellie did. You’ll see how she works to pull that off, and what the consequences are for her and Clara. Whatever one sister does, the other is affected in some way. Including flirtatious dalliances and romantic notions.

The romance we know most about and first is Clara’s as she’s engaged to be married to wealthy businessman Charles Hancock. Maddie sees him as an “opportunist” and “ruthless,” a source of consternation between the two. Clara is the opposite of her sister: she has a “cautious outlook on life” whereas Maddie’s is “laissez-faire” and risk-taking. Maddie believes Clara has chosen a shallow man who doesn’t understand nor care about her heart and passion for art, but could provide a protected life, yet smothering and sacrificing her desires. What Clara believes is in doubt; her passions put to the test in a glorious city that’s inspired artists for generations. Her fiancé may not be physically present but he makes his overbearing presence known every step of the way. This is a timeless feminist novel.

Both sisters are struggling with their self-worth and aspirations. Maddie had some indication she could be a fine journalist before she left; Clara too, as her art teacher Edward Arnold astonishes her with new watercolors and paintbrushes as she’s ready to set sail, giving her a boost of confidence.

Clara is the “radiant” one; Maddie the “difficult” one. Their relationship twists and turns, but it’s the three wishes and letters that drive the story. So much so you may think while reading, as I did, the book’s title is three wishes for goodbye. What are the Three Words?

To get to the first leg of their trip, we get to come on board the first Queen Mary, Cunard’s grand ocean-liner that docked in Cherbourg, Normandy during its inaugural voyage a year before Clara and Maddie sail from New York’s harbor to that French port city. An interesting piece of history we learn is the ship had a “Jewish prayer room, a stance by the shipping line against anti-Semitism.”

After arriving in France, they hopped on a train to Paris. Not the fabled one they took from Paris to Venice: the Orient Express, noted for its “artful elegance.” To arrive home, Violet booked the maiden voyage of the Hindenburg, a “hydrogen-filled airship,” also called a zeppelin since it was made by Germany’s Zeppelin Company (funded by the Nazis). We know this doomed flight was included in the sisters’ transportation itinerary on page 17, so you read this story thinking it will end in catastrophe. Does it?

One takeaway is that how you travel is part of the journey, so make it special. Which explains the arrangements Violet made for Clara and Maddie to experience Paris and environs from the skies before they left for Venice. They traveled to a Parisian suburb, Vaugirard, where a famous balloon factory was founded in the late 19^th century and sought by balloonists from around the globe, another interesting piece of history. You can already guess Clara doesn’t want to go, that Maddie does. Clara seeks out elegance and beauty, Maddie “drama and danger,” so the reader gets both.

Characterizing art “as much about what is left out as what is added,” saying “it is often what is left unsaid that conveys the clearest message” is as much a statement about art’s elusiveness as it is about defining love. Love is central to this novel, which asks “if it is really possible to fall in love with more than one person?” 

Left more unsaid than said is a message Violet learned the hard way and Clara and Maddie will confront: don’t be afraid of going after what you want. IF you can figure out what that is. Gaynor and Webb don’t make their choices easy, but sure do make their journeys entertaining.

Lorraine

Putting your life in the hands of an airplane family (LA skies to New York, and Playa del Rey neighborhood near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); present day): The next time you find yourself buckling your seat belt on a plane, you may think differently, more appreciatively, about the people you’ve temporarily turned your life over to – the Captain and copilot locked in the cockpit and flight attendants in the cabin – after reading T. J. Newman’s authentic thriller, Falling. These “strangers turned kin” are trained to treat every passenger as “souls,” each flight as “family.” 

Newman hasn’t just crafted edge-of-your-seat suspense, but asks character-trait questions about what makes someone courageous and others afraid. Qualities that dig deeper, to something undefinable about what we’re made of that we can’t know until our backs are pressed hard up against the wall.

In this non-stop, high-octane thriller, Captain Bill Hoffman couldn’t be put to a more superhuman test to stay in command of a “mass of humanity hanging in limbo” when he’s flying Flight 413 on fictional Coastal Airlines with 146 passengers and crew on board (along with copilot, Ben Miro, whom Bill hasn’t flown with before). Tension and action are swift as he learns on page 25 that his wife, Carrie, ten-year-old son Scott, and baby Elise have been taken hostage in their home by a terrorist. If it weren’t for personal technology, he wouldn’t have known a terrorist had set his plot into motion. The terrorist’s demand is simple – “either crash your plane or I will kill your family” – but vowing not to sacrifice any lives in the air and on the ground couldn’t be more fraught.

No amount of aviation training could prepare anyone for how they’d act when faced with such monumental decisions. A five-hour flight from LAX to New York’s JFK International Airport becomes an eternity when Bill sees Carrie wearing a suicide vest, with a black hood over her head and Scott’s head too. You’ll shiver at how easily the terrorist enters their home, how this could happen to any one of us. In the skies, Newman had plenty of real-world airplane scenarios and disasters to drive her imagination, which isn’t far-fetched.

In this nightmare, the aviation training described is from the standpoint of flight attendants since Newman spent ten years flying for Virgin America and Alaska Airlines, crafting much of her debut during “red-eye flights,” showing she’s fully in command of her story. A publishers’ bidding war resulted in a two-book, seven-figure advance with foreign rights already sold to thirty countries. Readers will be clamoring for her second book, because Falling is that good. So good it’s already been opted for a Universal Pictures movie. No surprise since the novel feels like you’re watching an airplane disaster film on the big screen, never letting go until the last 13 or so pages.

How does the author create such an immersive experience, where nearly every word sets the stage and is written with an eye for building suspense?

Equally interesting is the backstory to bringing this novel to fruition. Given Newman’s writing chops that show she knows her way around books too (a former bookseller) and her seasoned aviation experience, why did 41 literary agents reject the novel? Delivering so much authenticity, these many rejections defy the publishing industry’s release of thrillers that scream commercial value. Like Falling.

What makes this aviation novel stand out are also the moral questions asked. How much pressure can any single human being handle? What would you do if you were the captain? The flight attendant? One of the passengers?

This air-and-ground terrorist story shows us how vital flight attendants are. Clearly, one of Newman’s messages. Flight attendants may politely serving us drinks and food, but only one day is spent on customer service during their five-weeks of training. Everything is focused on life-saving skills, starting with reading body languages the moment a passenger steps inside the plane, to judge who could be relied upon to assist during an emergency?

In an engaging NPR interview, Newman said she could, for the most part, accurately predict who’d order what type of drink. In the novel, it’s accurately pinpointing who’ll be an ABP – an Able Bodied Person.

The author drew from her own experiences, but she also talked to lots of pilots to understand what they went through inside the cockpit once closed off to the rest of the cabin as a consequence of September 11^th. Despite Captain Bill being instructed by the terrorist not to utter a word of what’s being demanded of him in his locked compartment, he knows he cannot possibly protect the passengers without the assistance of the three flight attendants in the cabin. 

Bill Hoffman wasn’t supposed to fly that plane on that day, so when he kissed the “love of my life” goodbye in their Playa del Rey home, he started the flight already carrying a burden: he’d promised to attend Scott’s opening baseball game, so when he leaves Carrie’s mad at him. He’s got to compartmentalize guilty feelings of loving a job that necessitates constant leaving and re-entering his family’s lives, now left in grave danger without a way to protect them.

Falling conjures images of the 9/11 “Let’s Roll” passengers whose flight ended horrifically. It also reminds us of the miracle of Captain “Sully” Sullenberger who saved 155 people by landing Flight 1548 safely on the Hudson River. Tom Hanks played Sully in the movie; “nice” Hoffman comes across as a younger version of one of the nicest actors around. The movie tells the “inside story” like Newman fictionally does, with the reader praying for a miracle.

Jo, older than Bill, is the flight attendant in the front of the cabin who’s foremost; Michael and Kellie are in the back. Jo is SO good and dear – personally, competently, courageously – you’ll wish she was part of your family. A long-time friend of Bill and Carrie, her trust in Bill is “bedrock,” so is ours in her, along with Michael who doesn’t go by his real name. He’s called Big Daddy for all the right reasons despite his five-foot-three frame. Kellie is the flight attendant you wouldn’t choose for a terrorized flight, because she’s a newbie. What you’ll still see is teamwork and “communication passed off like a baton,” reinforcing the message that we’re all in this together. That we need each other if we’re hoping to survive.

Newman strategically injects the crew’s past in italicized paragraphs that can run a page or two, using this literary technique effectively to reveal how our pasts affect the present. Including the terrorist’s. Revealing his name by page 30, lessening our stereotyping of him because Khani is a popular surname in a number of countries. Little by little, we learn his motives, building to a crescendo.

Sometime in the 1980s, the word stewardess was changed to flight attendant to raise awareness of the profession’s role. Falling may be the gold standard showing us why.

Lorraine

The forces that led to Ethel Rosenberg’s demise (June 19, 1953, and years before and after; New York): There’s no way to sugar coat this story. A story of new revelations that had to be told. A story of how the impossible became reality. An unbelievable story. Perhaps you won’t believe it. Frankly, that too is hard-to-believe. Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy reads like historical fiction. IF only it was.

This isn’t the first time acclaimed British biographer and journalist Anne Sebba has revealed new information about a female historical figure presenting new perspectives. But it’s the first time she’s aimed her keen lens on an American woman – the only woman to be executed for a crime that wasn’t a murder.

“Ethel Rosenberg was not, I believe a spy,” Sebba convincingly argues. Rather, “hysteria” and a perfect storm of forces convicted to death a thirty-seven-year old mother of two young children – Michael was ten, Robby six, who to this day continue to defend their mother’s innocence. The evidence against Ethel was scant, dubious, and based on lies. Whereas, the evidence against Ethel’s husband, Julius Rosenberg, for passing secrets to the Soviets and recruiting a “spy ring” appears to have given the Communists a leg up on building an atomic bomb, certainly sooner than we thought.

Sebba writes about people in Ethel’s life who betrayed her, personal tragedies that turned into an American tragedy. Most glaring is her brother David Greenglass and his wife Ruth who lied to save their skins. In 2001, David admitted that he had lied. But back then a twenty-three-year-old, ambitious, tenacious lawyer named Roy Cohn (a name heard in recent years) may have been the linchpin that brought Ethel down. For instance, it was Cohn who invented the lie that David and Ruth ran with. He’d worked at the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico where the Manhattan Project nuclear scientists invented the atomic bomb. Not bright like Ethel, he was capable of stealing vital documents, which he sent on to Julius. Sentenced to prison for fifteen years, he got out in under ten, and Ruth remained innocent.

Sebba effectively and compassionately weaves in newly released (2014) prison letters Ethel wrote to Julius at Sing Sing, notorious for using the electric chair (no longer). Still operating as a prison for violent criminals, particularly noteworthy to Ethel’s story is a museum planned to open in 2025 on Sing Sing’s grounds to address the injustices of our prison system. But there’s no way to right the injustice carried out against Ethel, except sharing new evidence and reminding us of what happened in the fifties “topsy-turvy world” when the Red Scare and McCarthyism dominated our country.

This is not a political blog, but this is an American political story. It’s also an American story of anti-Semitism and anti-immigration, and the East European immigrant story about the slum conditions and spirit of the Lower East Side in the early 20^th century.

The author makes the case for Ethel’s innocence by explaining the context and circumstances that her conviction was made. Key was the timeframe the espionage was conducted, when the Soviet Union was considered our ally fighting to defeat Nazism during WWII. The Yalta Conference in 1945 in which Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met typifies that cooperation, which soon ended when FDR died and Truman became the next President and declared the Truman Doctrine to prevent the spread of Communism, a Cold War policy Sebba contends was quickly adopted by the Republicans to win back power.

The author also makes a strong point about Ethel (and Julius) sympathizing with the Communists, but so did many East European immigrants who believed socialism would improve their impoverished conditions to the tune of 40,000 Americans being members of the Community Party back then, rising to 83,000 by 1943.

You may have East European Jewish ancestors like Ethel’s (and Julius’) who immigrated to the Lower East Side in the late 20s and 30s, squeezed together in “tenement slums.” Ethel’s mother Tessie came from Galicia, now Ukraine, and her father from Poland. Jewish attitudes about Communism were furthered watching in horror Hitler’s rise to power with the Soviets aligning with Britain and the US to defeat the Nazis.

Sebba pulls together an impressive amount of research, reflected in pages and pages of Endnotes and bibliographical references, rendered with clarity, heart, and mercy. Combined with the new information she presents, you may find yourself like I was reading passages in the kitchen while cooking dinner.

“Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.” Those were words President Woodrow Wilson spoke calling upon Americans to enter WWI. Same words quoted in the epigraph, wartime words now applied to the Cold War. Words that explain why Ethel never betrayed Julius, even if it meant leaving behind her two young sons. Michael, her first-born, was a most difficult child, which he admitted years later. Ethel is painted as a mother who gave up her aspirations and activism to become a fifties housewife when American attitudes towards childrearing were changing. 

Dominated by pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, and child psychologists Arnold Gesell and Bruno Bettelheim, greater permissiveness did not work with Michael. Nothing did.

Which is why Ethel may have looked like an ordinary housewife, but she was more intense, growing more obsessed about Michael’s behavior the more challenging he became, going so far as to seek psychotherapy for both of them. Her transition to dedicating herself to motherhood fits her earlier coming-of-age as she was someone who threw herself with gusto into her academics and the performing arts: theatre and singing, including at Carnegie Hall. Rather than judging her on her all-consuming mothering – therefore she couldn’t have been a spy – the prosecutors, judge, and jury (and 70% of Americans) bought into the notion that she had to be a spy or why else would a mother leave her young children behind. 

Two other family betrayals contributed to Ethel’s distress. The one she took to her grave was the cruelty and absolute rejection by her mother. Her brother Sam stood with Tessie. Her brother Bernie was the only one who expressed sympathies for her, but compared to the growing protestors, especially from France, the letter he wrote to Ethel was lukewarm. 

The epistolary aspect of this book is heartbreaking. Ethel’s letters to her attorney Emanuel Bloch show her increasingly feeling isolated and despairing, though she fought to remain tough on the outside to her bitter end. Her extreme attachment to her lawyer was beyond normal, though nothing’s normal in this gothic tale.

The author adds fresh authenticity by seeking out and interviewing Elizabeth Phillips in 2018. Her memories of Ethel are still vivid. She knew Ethel presumably better than most. So how could she forget?

Whatever you come to believe, you’ll agree this is a riveting story you can’t forget.

Lorraine