Showing results by author "Alexis Landau" in All Categories

As a Russian Jewish émigré to France, Vera's wealth cannot protect her or her four-year-old-daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy the country. After receiving notice that all foreigners must report to an internment camp, Vera has just a few hours to make an impossible choice: Does she subject Lucie to the horrid conditions of the camp, or does she put her into hiding with her beloved and trusted governess, safe until Vera can retrieve her? Believing the war will end soon, Vera chooses to leave Lucie in safety.

Kept busy by her obligations as a wife and mother, art history professor Ava Zaretsky has little time to devote to her research and writing. Now tagging along on her film-producer husband’s shoot in Bulgaria for the summer, where she’s mostly solo parenting her sweet son and rebellious budding tween daughter, she has a chance encounter with her fierce feminist mentor from college, which changes everything.

Lev Perlmutter, an assimilated, cultured German Jew, enlists to fight in World War I, leaving behind his gentile wife, Josephine, and their children, Franz and Vicki. Moving between Lev's and Josephine's viewpoints, part one of the novel focuses on Lev's experiences on the Eastern Front - both in war and in love - which render his life at home a pale aftermath by comparison. Part two picks up in Berlin in 1927-1928: the Perlmutter children, now young adults, grapple with their own questions.

On the cusp of World War II, a young mother is faced with an impossible choice. Vera is a Russian Jewish émigré to France, newly wed - but her marriage cannot protect her or her four-year-old daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy the country. After receiving notice that all foreigners must report to an internment camp, Vera must decide: does she subject Lucie to the horrid conditions of the camp or put Lucie into hiding with her beloved and trusted governess, safe until Vera can retrieve her? Surely the war will end soon.