Recounting months spent dodging wildfires, writer Manjula Martin considers what it means to create a home in a place that is destined to burn, and to live "inside a damaged body on a damaged planet."
Recounting months spent dodging wildfires, writer Manjula Martin considers what it means to create a home in a place that is destined to burn, and to live "inside a damaged body on a damaged planet."
(Image credit: Pantheon)
Stephen McCauley's comic novel offers readers the gift of laughter as well as a more expansive image of what family can be. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says it was a perfect January read.
Stephen McCauley's comic novel offers readers the gift of laughter as well as a more expansive image of what family can be. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says it was a perfect January read.
(Image credit: Henry Holt and Co.)
UnCovered Review by Nancy Wessler, ACLS Mays Landing Branch
It’s 1943, and eighteen-year-old Isa de Smit has been struggling to make ends meet since the Nazis shut down her family’s art gallery in Amsterdam. She’s also caring for her widowed father, a brilliant artist with a knack for copying the Masters, who is becoming ever more erratic. Desperate to keep her home, she decides to sell one of her father’s paintings, successfully passing it off as a Rembrandt–and tricking Hitler’s agent into purchasing it.
In so doing, however, she captures the attention of Michel Lange, a young Nazi soldier in charge of assisting with the sales. He wants to desert and is willing to blackmail Isa into helping him do it. Meanwhile, Isa’s friend and Dutch Resistance member, Truus, also wants Isa’s help. She’s working to smuggle Jewish babies out of the city and needs money for the bribe that will assure they get to safety.
Isa resolves to aid Truus, but to do so she’ll need more than the money earned from selling the fake Rembrandt. She’ll need to craft and sell another forgery. This means navigating both the world of reviled collaborators and that of Resistance conspirators. It means learning how to truly spot a fake. It means trusting Michel Lange. But for the lives that could be saved, isn’t the risk worth it?
ARTIFICE by Sharon Cameron is a young adult historical thriller that seamlessly blends fact and fiction to create a riveting page-turner that is evocative, emotional, and beautifully written. It is at least partially inspired by the true stories of Han Van Meegeren, a master art forger who famously sold fakes to Hermann Goering, and Johann Van Hulst, a school director credited with saving over 600 Jewish children from death–as well as multiple real life Dutch Resistance heroes. It offers a fascinating and heartbreaking glimpse into life under occupation–the constant tension of distrust and subjugation–as both culture and lives are stolen. However, it is ultimately a story about finding beauty in an ugly world and the chances worth taking to un-make so many wrongs. An altogether compelling read.
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