The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz by Michelle Cameron

Pocket Books, 2009 ISBN: 9781439118221

Written by a descendant of Rabbi Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a noted Talmudic scholar and commentator of the Middle Ages, Cameron explores Baruch’s life, and the life of the Jewish communities of Medieval France, Germany, and England, through the viewpoint of a fictional character: the Rabbi’s wife, Shira, about whom nothing (not even her real name) is actually known.

The imagined character of Shira is an intelligent and lively daughter of a Rabbinic scholar who runs a yeshiva in their home. To the disapproval of the community, Shira’s father teaches his motherless daughter to read and write, and to study Torah, something that gets harder for her to do as she gets older and becomes more and more responsible for overseeing the household and the running of the school. Shira and Meir meet while he is studying at her father’s school, and theirs is a love match, but Meir’s expectations of Shira to be a traditional wife often chafe at her.

Despite their occasional differences, and perhaps because of the challenges faced by the Jewish communities in Medieval Europe: anti-Semitism that ranged from restricting people’s lives to violent attacks, to the burning of every copy of the Talmud in a community (a real historical event on Meir Ben Baruch’s life which is recounted here), to accusations of witchcraft, mass imprisonment for imagined crimes, or the crimes of others, Shira and Meir pull together and build a rich life together.
,
Well-researched, and rich with both historical detail, and emotion, this is a book that readers of historical fiction will find informative and deeply satisfying.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword of Avalon by Diana L. Paxson

Roc, 2009 ISBN: 9780451462923
Paxson envisions here the circumstances of the creation of the sword, Excalibur, which will later come into play in the King Arthur legends. Based on archaeological evidence of technology, she sets the time period in the latter part of the Bronze Age / into the beginning of the Iron Age when iron-smithing was a technological possibility.

The tribes of the British Isles are descending into war with each other as the climate is increasingly hostile and food becomes scarce. What is needed, believes Anderle, the current Lady of Avalon, is a King to lead the tribes back into unity. She believes this to be the destiny of the infant Mikantor, who she rescues from the fiery destruction of his tribe by that of a marauding band of renegades.

She does what she can to keep his existence hidden, but ultimately, the boy’s enemies realize that he is living. When he is finally captured, his life is spared when his captors sell him into slavery instead of killing them as they have been ordered to do.

Mikantor then spends some years in the Mediterranean, as the slave, and then companion and friend of Velantos, the smith of the soon to fall City-State of Tiryns. Mikantor learns the art of weaponry, and together with Velantos, who has had a vision that he is to forge a sword to be wielded by a mighty king, returns to the British Isles to take up his destiny.

Paxson’s character development does not live up to that of Zimmer Bradley’s, and the episodic, plot-driven story ultimately falls short of expectations, providing a quick read that doesn’t have a lasting impact.

The Mandrake Broom by Jess Wells

Firebrand Books, 2007 ISBN: 1563411520

Set in Europe in the 14-1500s this is a well-researched, complex, and exciting historical novel about the efforts of a family of women to hold onto, and pass along medical and herbal knowledge in the face of witch hunts. Luccia Alimenti, daughter of a female medical professor at the University of Salerno is entrusted and ordered by her mother to carry out this task, which she does against all odds. Never dull, there is plenty of danger, adventure, and love in this small package.

Published as an adult novel, teens who enjoy historical fiction will find this a worthwhile read.

A Girl Made of Dust by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

Grove Press, 2009

Ruba, an eight-year-old Lebanese, Maronite Christian girl is of an age where she is becoming more aware of family tensions, as well as being concerned with real and imaginary childhood issues such as the taunting of her Muslim friend, Karim at school, and her belief that a neighbor woman is a witch who must have put a curse on her depressed father to cause his nearly immobilized condition.

Her older brother, Naji is spending less and less time playing with her as he falls in with some older boys who are engaging in dangerous play.

Her mother and grandmother try to hold the family together emotionally and financially, and the visit of Uncle Wadih lightens the mood temporarily. Ruba, however, discovers that there is a family secret, which everyone but she knows, and which somehow explains her father’s depression and strange rages.

Meanwhile, Israel has invaded Lebanon, and the shelling comes closer and closer to their town. When the bombing finally arrives, the whole family is forced to deal not just with the present danger, but with the painful past.

An interesting book about a culture and history that may be unfamiliar to many Western readers, but with which we can identify emotionally through Abi-Ezzi’s strong writing, even as we learn from it.

The Turtle Catcher by Nicole Helget

Liesel Richter and Lester Sutter are outcasts in their pre-World War I Wisconsin community of New Germany. Liesel is the illegitimate daughter of a young German woman and her Jewish lover. When her sister finds out that she is pregnant, she arranges for the two of them to leave Germany and settle in the United States where she quickly finds husbands for each of them. Liesel is born with some kind of anomaly and is kept at the family farm by her mother because of it. Lester, the son of the neighb…more Liesel Richter and Lester Sutter are outcasts in their pre-World War I Wisconsin community of New Germany. Liesel is the illegitimate daughter of a young German woman and her Jewish lover. When her sister finds out that she is pregnant, she arranges for the two of them to leave Germany and settle in the United States where she quickly finds husbands for each of them. Liesel is born with some kind of anomaly (she is probably intersexed, but all we know is that something is “wrong” “down there”), and is kept at the family farm by her mother because of it. Lester, the son of the neighboring family, is brain-damaged after years of abuse at the hand of his drunken father. The two become friends of a sort, drawn together in part by their outcast status, in part by proximity. When their friendship goes farther, all hell breaks loose, and people take regrettable actions. Meanwhile, World War I has broken out, and the Swedish and Norwegian members of the community feed resentments into angry action toward the German settlers they have lived alongside of all these years.

3mout of 5 stars

Houghton Mifflin,
0618753125 / 9780618753123

Touba and the Meaning of Night (Women Writing the Middle East) by شهرنوش پارسی پور Shahrnush Parsipur

A bestseller from the time of it’s release in Iran, this amazing book has finally been translated into English for Western readers to sink their teeth into. Historical, mythical, and with long, loosely connected tangents of magical realism, this book covers the life of one Iranian woman over her very long life, as well as the political, social, and religious changes during that time period. Touba lives through the reigns of shahs, of British and Russian Colonialists, of the relatively brief peri…more A bestseller from the time of it’s release in Iran, this amazing book has finally been translated into English for Western readers to sink their teeth into. Historical, mythical, and with long, loosely connected tangents of magical realism, this book covers the life of one Iranian woman over her very long life, as well as the political, social, and religious changes during that time period. Touba lives through the reigns of shahs, of British and Russian Colonialists, of the relatively brief period of constitutional democracy, and into the beginning of the Islam revolution. Touba is a very intelligent woman, but is limited by the strict roles impressed on her beginning in her early childhood. She directs that intellectual passion toward a desire to have a mystical experience of truth, but is not able to make the pilgrimages she dreams of, due to family obligations. This is not an easy read, but it’s engrossing and worthwhile. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2006
1558615199 (isbn13: 9781558615199)

Your Mouth is Lovely by Nancy Richler

“Your Mouth is Lovely” is set in Russia in the years leading up to the Revolution and centers on the life of a poor Jewish, motherless child, Miriam, who grows up on the outskirts both of her village, and of its sense of community. After some years of being fostered out, she is returned to her father’s home when he remarries. Her stepmother, Tsila, raises her with a rough, irritated, kindness, making sure she knows how to read, among the other things she believes it necessary for a girl to know. In later years, Tsila’s sister Batya gets involved in political protest, and has disappeared somewhere in Kiev. Miriam convinces her parents that she should be the one to go find her. How she ends up in a prison camp in Siberia writing to the daughter she will never see is as fascinating as the rest of her story.

Etta, A Novel by Gerald Kolpan

Everyone knows at least something about the real-life characters of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but there’s little, to no information about Etta Place, the woman who accompanied the Hole in the Wall Gang, and is familiar to us only from the 1969 movie where she is played by Katharine Ross

The lack of information is frustrating to a historian, but a wonderful opportunity for the novelist. And Kolpan has taken the reins and heads us off on quite an adventure.