Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC PLAIN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dayton Public Library | PLAIN | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
She was the exquisite daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant. From a charmed girlhood in opulent New Orleans, she would be swept into the cataclysm of the Civil War. Forced to choose between her duties as a Southern wife and mother and her love for a forbidden man, a forbidden cause, Miriam Raphael is at the center of the whirlwind in a spellbinding novel of divided loyalties and divided hearts.
Author Notes
Belva Plain lives in northern New Jersey. She is the author of the bestselling novels "Evergreen", "Random Winds", "Eden Burning", "Crescent City", "The Golden Cup", "Tapestry", "Blessings", "Harvest", "Treasures", "Whispers", "Daybreak", "The Carousel", "Promises", "Secrecy", "Homecoming", "Legacy of Silence", "Fortune's Hand", and "After the Fire".
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Plain has set her latest saga in and around Civil War New Orleans, and her gutsy heroine and self-sacrificing/self-serving men wing toward their predictable destinies pretty much on automatic pilot, Howard Fast-fashion;still, like Fast's sagas, it's all comfortably familiar. Ferdinand Raphael flees his poverty-stricken home for the New World--New Orleans--after the pogrom death of his wife Hannah, with 15-year-old David and nine-year-old Miriam. And Ferdinand becomes not only a luxury-loving cosmopolite, leaving his orthodox Jewish faith, but marries non-Jewish widow Emma. Meanwhile son David, who makes a lifelong friend in shipboard acquaintance Gabriel, becomes increasingly disturbed by his father's airy attitude toward his religion; also he's uneasy with the institution of slavery but learns gradually to curb his tongue--while planning a career in medicine, with unformulated but determined plans to help the slaves. As for Miriam, she's pretty but confused, marrying in her late teens: alas, businessman hubby Eugene Mendes turns out to be callous, autocratic--and sex is loathsome. (Miriam will give birth to twins; Mendes has another child by a local quadroon beauty.) Eventually, then, David (despite Gabriel's arguments about lawful activism) will join an underground group of white abolitionists and Negroes (doing exactly what is not quite clear); in a raid, he shoots and kills his stepmother's son-in-law. So it's up North for David--via a hair's-breadth escape, engineered by Gabriel and Miriam--while domestic catastrophes and Civil War-fare rumbles: papa Ferdinand goes bankrupt; Mendes is Minded by a disgruntled customer; and then Mendes finds out about Miriam's lover, dashing AndrÉ. (In punishment he takes away from Miriam management of his business--which she's been handling with aplomb.) During the war, Miriam heads a household of two incapacitated men, a handful of frightened women, children, and slaves. There'll be raids by both Northern and Southern toughs; hunger and danger; family deaths. Gabriel and David heroically soldier on--on different sides. Meanwhile, Miriam is carrying on--but not with AndrÉ, who reveals his true nature. . . and at last she finds true love. A part-Jewish dollop of GWTW--decarbonated but saleable. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.