Recent Reviews
The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on September 8, 2019
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/dutch-heroine-saves-jewish-children-in-last-train/
Recent bestsellers like ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and ‘The Lilac Girls’ focus on the horrors of the Holocaust and the barbarity of the concentration camps. A new novel by Bay Area resident, Meg Waite Clayton, ‘The Last Train to London’ is a fictionalized account of how Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer personally saved a thousand Jewish children from those camps. Her excellent novel enriches the genre and brings to life this brave Dutch heroine.
The novel begins in 1936. Wijsmuller-Meijer, known as Tante Truus, with help from her husband Joop, has been rescuing small groups of children and transporting them out of Germany. Courageous and cunning, she bribes Nazis, endures jail and withstands Gestapo interrogations. Her training as a social worker, her Christian faith and perhaps the sadness of not being able to have children propel her to save innocent lives.
Two young people saved by Tante Truus are Stephan Neuman and Žofie-Helene Perger. In another time, Stephan and Žofie’s courtship might be carefree, but in this dangerous time, their friendship becomes a matter of life and death. Though not religious, Stephan’s family is Jewish. He lives with his mother, father and five-year-old brother Walter in a lavish house in Vienna adorned with paintings by Van Gogh, Klimt and Kokoschka. Žofie is not Jewish. But because her mother publishes scathing editorials about Hitler’s evil regime, Žofie and her family are not safe either. Initially, Stephan and Žofie ignore the Nazi thugs. But after the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in March of 1938, the Nazis intensify their sinister policies. All Jews are subject to escalating viciousness. Stephan is no longer allowed in school. The Nazis loot Stephan’s family’s apartment. They beat Stephan’s father and drag him into a truck headed for a camp.
True to the historical record, Tante Truus encounters Adolph Eichmann. Before the war, Eichmann has been working his way up the Nazi hierarchy. As head of Jewish Office in Vienna, he cynically studies the Viennese Jewish leaders and their culture. Eichmann has not yet written his diabolical “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, but his cruelty is already evident.
In November of 1938, after the ransacking and destruction of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, the British Parliament votes to expedite the rescue of Jewish children. This effort becomes known as the Kindertransport. The English refugee aid leaders believe Tante Truus might be able to persuade Eichmann to let some children leave. In a climactic scene, she meets with the creepy and controlling Eichmann. He makes a joke of her request and for unknown reasons allows six hundred Jewish children to depart Vienna. His caveat: they must go on the Sabbath, a day Orthodox Jews are prohibited from traveling. Thanks to Tante Truus, Žofie, Stephan, and Stephan’s brother, Walter, are three of the six hundred children who escape that day. Between 1938-1940, over ten thousand children find refuge in England.
Clayton’s book is clearly the product of prodigious historical research. It captures the wave of hate and intimidation directed at Vienna’s Jewish community even before WWII begins. While the anti-Semitism is vividly captured, I would have liked to hear more about the rich traditions of the Viennese Jewish community before the Nazis.
‘The Last Train to London’ serves as a reminder that even in dangerous times, each one of us can make a difference. Without resistance, extremist ideologies ferment into full-blown lawlessness. When asked about her boldness, Tante Truus said, “My father used to say courage isn’t the absence of fear, but rather going forward in the face of it.” What is vital about this novel is not that it helps us understand the inhumanity of the Nazis, but rather, it helps us imagine the inspiring humanity of those who opposed them. Thanks to Meg Waite Clayton for bringing Tante Truus to life at this moment when cruelty is once again on the march.
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker
What a remarkable book! I felt pulled into Michael Parker’s novel Prairie Fever after reading the first chapter. Parker’s literary capabilities stun in this compelling story about two sisters who are tested by the punishing life on the prairie and the complex emotions of their hearts.
At its most basic, this story is a love triangle. The Stewart sisters: Lorena 17 and Elise 15 who live in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma in 1917, both fall for the new school teacher. Gus McQueen, 18. Their father is a farmer who keeps his distance. Their mother is bereft after the death of their two brothers. Nonetheless, each morning she helps Lorena and Elise mount Sandy, their horse, for the 4-mile trek to school.
Parker’s writing is gorgeous and evocative. “Winter mornings, their mother kissed them both on the forehead, pinned the blanket around the two of them, and slapped the horse’s croup. Lorena held the reins. Elise wrapped her arms around her older sister’s waist and both girls shut their eyes against the icy wind of the prairie. Inside the blanket, they warmed themselves with words. Off they would go into the world, whispering things with and without words, protected from the cold by the heat of their bodies and the blanket of sky.”
Despite their different demeanors, Elise and Lorena have always completed each other. Lenore is precise, stubborn and severe, while Else is whimsical, impulsive and dreamy. The sisters’ connection is secure and their love for each other deep. But when the new teacher Gus McQueen arrives at their one-room schoolhouse, both Lenore and Elise eventually are attracted to him, causing friction in the sisters’ relationship. Their inner lives and external paths are changed forever.
Language, grammar and spelling delight all three characters. They understand the limitations of words to express the deepest of feelings. The narrator offers, “Thank goodness everyone was trying to tell you something else entirely, for if the world were made up only of what actually came out of people’s mouth, Elise would prefer the frozen eternity of heaven.” The book also addresses some existential issues. The sisters repeatedly ask each other, “ What do you think is the point of life” Lorena answers herself, “The point of life is to know your limitations.”
I won’t say which sister marries Gus, but two decades after the betrayal, some healing and forgiveness occurs between the sisters. Here is a quote from the end of the novel. “Dusk had come to her and Elise watched it and sang the buried songs to Lorena. Against the icy wind, Sandy struggled, but they were all safe and warm beneath the blanket of sky.”
If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, this is not the book for you. However, if you are interested in characters that struggle, think and change, you are in for a treat. Grace moves through this novel.
The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
I love Sarah Blake’s new novel, The Guest Book. It is an engaging and sweeping story about three generations of a New York WASP family struggling with changing social mores and a diminishing fortune. The novel explores how the secrets of one generation can permanently alter the dynamics of the next generation, even if current family members don’t quite understand why. The story’s vivid characters illustrate how WASP culture maintains power by perpetuating racism, sexism and anti-Semitism. Blake’s appreciation of history, both personal and societal, permeates the book. The themes of the novel are provocative, the characters well developed and the dialogue rings true.
In 1935, Ogden and Kitty Milton have everything they want: each other, plenty of money, status in Manhattan society and three beautiful children. Ogden’s traces his lineage back to the Mayflower, and like the Milton men before him, he graduated from Harvard. He runs a successful Wall Street investment firm started by his father. When Kitty and Ogden’s 5-year-old son Neddy falls from a window and dies, Kitty is devastated. Ogden and Kitty don’t speak of Neddy’s death to each other or their surviving children. In true WASP fashion, Ogden’s mother counsels, “Somethings are better off left unsaid.” To help “Kitty snap out of it,” Ogden buys an island off the coast of Maine. (WHAT?!) Each summer, this island becomes the emotional epicenter for the three remaining Milton offspring and eventually their collective five children. While on the island, Kitty reminds her family that “good manners are the foundation of civilization and noise is for the poorly bred.”
In the present, Kitty and Ogden and their progeny are deceased, their fortune spent. The five grandchildren, who are in their 50s, must decide the fate of the family’s island. For Evie, one of the granddaughters, the island cannot be sold as it holds the family’s history and identity. Decade after decade, the family still gathers each summer. Time seems to standstill. “Nothing will ever change. Sunlight. Starlight. Drinks on the dock. A single-sail outing in the bay. It will never change. You will not die. On and On. Like a painting. As long as the island stands, we stand.” And yet just three generations later, Kitty and Ogden’s grandchildren are wrestling with the implication of their grandparents’ depleted fortune.
Willful ignorance is a theme of the novel. At some level, the Milton family never questioned the source of Ogden Milton’s fortune. Years later Evie’s husband discovers Ogden profited from a Nazi affiliated company. More systemic is Kitty and Ogden’s racism, anti-Semitism and myopic perception of the world. Their son Moss knows that the end of WWII is bringing social change and greater inclusion. When he invites his Jewish friend Len Levy and his black friend Reg Pauling to the island, Kitty and Ogden warmly welcome them. Pleasant conversation and genial banter ensue. Though both these men are Harvard graduates, Kitty and Ogden view them as interlopers who can never be a part of the elite establishment. WASPS should be in power. People from other tribes should be guests. The Miltons want to believe the sole reason for their financial success is that Ogden works hard, rather than acknowledging the economic system advances WASPS while excludes others.
Another theme of the novel is how WASP culture values secrecy. The five grandchildren know almost nothing about the climactic night on the island when their Uncle Moss died. Evie says, “No one really talks about Uncle Moss. He was a little tragic, I think. He played the piano.” It is jarring how little his nieces and nephews know of their gregarious, kind and complicated uncle whose life dominated one generation of Miltons.
Kitty and Ogden hoped their island would permanently remain in the Milton family as a counterforce to the simple truth of human existence, “we vanish.” It is unclear what will happen. I wish the novel’s ending offered greater resolution about all the characters. But maybe that is Blake’s point. The older generation of Miltons took many secrets to the grave. It is up to the younger generation to sort through the detritus of their complicated family legacy and understand the implications for their lives.
