Critical for its underexplored subject.
This novelization of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom graphically describes the carnage as Christian Russians slaughter their Jewish fellow townspeople.
Three protagonists startlingly reduce to two when one, a Christian 14-year-old, is stabbed to death by his uncle, who covets the family tobacco business. Over the following months, Kishinev’s newspaper Bessarabetz whips the city into a frenzy by claiming that Jews murdered Mikhail to use his blood for baking matzah, urging, “we need to come together, fellow Christians, to purge our town of Jews.” The narrative shifts focus between Rachel and Sergei, friends of Mikhail, for the lead up to, climax and aftermath of the pogrom. Rachel is Jewish: Rioters butcher her father and neighbors in front of her, smash houses and businesses and upend her world. Sergei is Russian Orthodox. Although son of the look-the-other-way police chief, Sergei steadfastly repudiates the blood libel but, as a 14-year-old, can’t prevent the slaughter. Sanders’ debut has generic prose and occasional anachronisms, but nonetheless adeptly conveys the history, from Mikhail Rybachenko’s real name to the bitter bigotry and bloodbath. One odd misstep: The text paints Rachel’s titular “secret”—her knowledge of Mikhail’s true murderer—as crucially important, as if that information could, in the right hands, have saved lives. But Russia and Eastern Europe’s pogroms (including Kishinev’s second, in 1905) needed no trigger beyond anti-Semitism.
Critical for its underexplored subject. (historical note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 10-15)Pub Date: April 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-926920-37-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Powerful and resonant.
Four 12-year-old Sephardic Jewish girls in different time periods leave their homelands but carry their religion, culture, language, music, and heritage with them.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 sends Benvenida fleeing from Toledo with her family, though she promises to remember where she came from. In 1923, Reina celebrates Turkish independence with her longtime friend and neighbor, a Muslim boy, causing her strict father to disown her and send her to live with an aunt in Cuba as punishment. Reina brings her mother’s oud with her and passes it on to Alegra, her daughter, who serves as a brigadista in Castro’s literacy campaign before fleeing to the U.S. in 1961. In Miami in 2003, Paloma, Alegra’s daughter, who has an Afro-Cuban dad, is excited to travel to Spain with her family to explore their roots. They find a miraculous connection in Toledo. Woven through all four girls’ stories is the same Ladino song (included with an English translation); as Paloma says, “I’m connected to those who came before me through the power of the words we speak, the words we write, the words we sing, the words in which we tell our dreams.” Behar’s diligent research and her personal connection to this history, as described in a moving author’s note, shine through this story of generations of girls who use music and language to survive, tell their stories, and connect with past and future.
Powerful and resonant. (sources) (Historical fiction. 10-15)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593323403
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Stronger books may exist about the 1960s, but female friendship tales never go out of style.
For “bad girls,” hell can be a place on Earth.
In Houston in the early ’60s, girls only seem to have two choices: be a good girl and get married or be a bad girl and live your life. Fifteen-year-old Evie, from a working-class White family, became a bad girl after her sister’s shotgun wedding took her away from home. Mexican American neighbor Juanita, who smokes, drinks, wears intense eye makeup, and runs with the tough crowd, takes Evie under her wing, but despite the loyalty of this new sisterhood, Evie often feels uncertain of her place. When a rich girl from the wealthy part of town named Diane saves Evie from assault by killing the attacker, Evie finds a new friend and, through that friendship, discovers her own courage. This work borrows a few recognizable beats from S.E. Hinton’s 1967 classic, The Outsiders—class tensions, friendship, death, and a first-person narrative that frequently employs the word tuff—but with a gender-swapped spin. Overall, the novel would have benefited from a stronger evocation of the setting. During an era of societal upheaval, Evie struggles to reconcile her frustration at the limited roles defined for her and her friends, with many moments of understanding and reflection that will resonate with modern readers’ sensibilities—although sadly she still victim blames herself for the attempted assault.
Stronger books may exist about the 1960s, but female friendship tales never go out of style. (author's note, resources) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-23258-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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