Books Set in Europe and North America, Germany and New York, New York

The Girl Who Rode the White Lion, by Yishay Ishi Ron (2026)

This novel moves back and forth from the late 1930s in Germany to New York City in the late 1950s.  Mark Spence is a veterinarian for the Central Park Zoo in 1957.  When a rare white lion dies, he performs the autopsy.  He finds an SS Nazi silver ring in the lion's gut, which leads him on a hunt to find the story behind the ring.

The story then takes the reader to Nazi Germany on Kristallnacht, where a vicious SS officer used the violence to terrorize the family of a former Jewish friend.  He immediately sent his former friend to a concentration camp, but plays a cat-and-mouse with his friend's wife and young daughter.  The mother takes her daughter, Sarah Frank, to the circus, which is in town, hoping they can hide out in the crowd there.  Sarah is unofficially adopted by the circus manager and his wife.

Meanwhile, Mark Spence begins an international hunt to find clues as to the origin of the Nazi ring.

The mystery slowly unfolds with lots of twists and turns.  The story of young Sarah Frank is more interesting than that of Mark Spence.  Still, it was a fascinating novel that I read in one sitting.

Read:  September 16, 2026

4 Stars

Books Set in North America, United States, Georgia

The Twelve-Mile Straight, by Eleanor Henderson (2017)

Read: September 14, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States: Texas and California

The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah (2021)

 

The novel opens in 1921 in the Texas panhandle.  The economy is booming and life is good.  Elsa Wolcott is the eldest daughter of a wealthy family.  She is, however, tall, unattractive and unmarriageable, or so her parents tell her.  When she was fourteen, she suffered an illness and now her parents keep her sheltered.

 

One night, she meets Rafe Martinelli, a young man several years younger.  She falls head-over-heels and soon her reputation is ruined.  Her father demands that she marry Rafe, then her family disowns her.  Elsa and Rafe begin their married life living with his parents on a farm.  Although Elsa had never worked hard in her life, she soon comes to love the farm.  Rafe’s parents, although disappointed that Rafe’s life has taken a turn, soon come to love Elsa as their own.  For the first time, Elsa feels love.

 

By the mid-1930’s life has changed.  Dust storms and droughts devastate farmlands.  Elsa struggles to keep life going on the farm for the sake of her two young children.  After one particularly bad dust storm, however, Elsa has had enough.  She packs the farm’s only truck and with her children in tow, heads for California.  They have heard that California is the land of milk and honey and jobs are plentiful.

 

Unfortunately, once they reach California, Elsa realizes that she has no idea where to turn to next.  The harsh reality sets in.  Californians resent the migration of “Okies”, a generic term they used to describe all migrants coming to escape the Dust Belt.  The children are discriminated against in school, and hospitals will not accept the Okies.  Eventually, Elsa gets a job picking cotton, but soon learns that she is paid on credit, and must use the company store for all her groceries and needs.

 

Workers are beginning to get restless, and the Communist party begins to organize strikes.  I learned a lot about what life was like for the migrants.  It was a fast read.

 

Read:  March 27, 2021

 

4 stars

 

Books Set in the United States: New York City

Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (2011)

Rules of Civility begins when a middle-aged couple are viewing a retrospective exhibition of Walker Evans photographs, taken during the 1930s.  They come across two portraits of a man taken years apart.  The first shows a handsome young man who appears as a man of wealth. In the second photograph, he appears down on his luck.  The man, whom the wife recognizes as Tinker Gray, was once an important figure in the her past.  Seeing the photographs causes the woman to reminisce of her life back as a young woman making her way in New York City.

Katey Kontent is the narrator.  She remembers back when she first moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and worked as a secretary in a law firm and lived in a boarding house.  On New Year’s Eve 1937, she and her friend Eve, went out on the town and in a chance encounter met Tinker Grey.  He was a handsome young banker, and both Eve and Katey fall in love with him.  Soon the three of them were inseparable until a car accident occurred and Eve was seriously injured.  She recovered, and soon after she and Tinker set off for Europe.

Through Tinker, Katey was able to rub elbows with the wealthy and highly connected in New York society.  She landed a plum job as an assistant to the publisher of a hot new magazine, which allowed her to further enter the world of the rich and famous.  Tinker and Eve were always on her mind, however.  When Eve suddenly returned to New York, having become bored with Tinker, Katey looked to renew her relationship with Tinker. But was he who she thought he was.

There is a mystery surrounding Tinker and there were vague hints to his “situation”, which Katey had never explored before.

I enjoyed this book, but found it a bit hard to get into at first.  The author certainly painted a vivid picture of life amount the young inherited wealth in New York in the 1930s.

Read: September 2, 2018

3 Stars