Retrieving memories of and writing about your own past can be challenging enough. Recounting someone else’s life history – enabling readers to actually see it unfold through the eyes of your subject and doing so convincingly – can be even more daunting. In writing the memoir Beggars or Angels (August 2013, Oaklight Publishing) for an amazing woman who’s lived through enough drama and hardship to fill two lifetimes, I had two main goals:
Wolf Hunt: The Napoleonic Murders by Armand Cabasson takes place during the Napoleonic wars while the Austrians and the French battle over some small villages by the Danube. The mystery takes second place to the author’s impressive research of the time, whether it would be battlefield tactics or a Viennese ball.
The publisher is giving away one copy of this book –to enter fill out the Rafflecoptter form at the end of the post. “Please don’t cut off my legs,” I scream, as the Jaws of Life chew through the wreckage. The loud blast reverberates around me. Overcome with anxiety, I feel vulnerable. It takes the fire department 45 minutes to remove the car’s roof and cut me out of the wreckage. My legs look like they went through a meat grinder. The pain is so piercing it causes me to pass out on the way to Riverton Hospital. The Emergency Room doctors rush me into surgery to save my life by removing my spleen. I am abruptly awakened by gut-wrenching pressure, ‘Oh my God, I am awake! I CAN FEEL EVERY SLICE OF THE KNIFE!’ The operation brings my suffering to the edge. I try to scream out in an agony of pain, but no one can hear me since I have a tube down my throat. I move my hand to let the surgical team know I am conscious. However, the staff misreads my movement as muscles spasms, and continues to carve into me, shredding the inside of my abdomen…
6. The original name for Wonder Woman was Suprema.
The author presents each person as a human being, something that’s missing from today’s fast paced, 24/7 world, each person is his or hers own universe, not a bullet point or a statistic. The book celebrates those who survived, learned and some even flourished from their tragedy.
The center of the story is a group of kids from various classes who get arrested and interrogated. Most of the kids are children to upper class parents (generals, politicians, entertainers) and think they’ll be all right. However, Stalin sees this as an opportunity to test the loyalty of the parents to the state (meaning himself) and uses them to his benefit.
Ruth Perlmutter, a retired Mossad agent and owner of a travel agency, has been asked to investigate the murder of Arthur, and ex-colleague from the Mossad. The death leads Ruth to investigate her colleagues, find ex-lovers and
historical letters written by Theodor Herzl (the founder of the Zionist movement).
3. Her father was a law-rank samurai (a rank which he bought and lost), a municipal worker and lost the family’s money on a failed business
