The

Storytellers

`The Ghost of
Hannah Mendes'

T

As novelists
Naomi Ragen,
Susan Isaacs,
Pearl Abraham
and Michael
Lowenthal
prepare to visit
the Jewish
Book Fair,
"The IN" reviews
their new works
of fiction.

he genealogist in all
of us will appreciate
the latest novel by
Naomi Ragen, the
American-born Orthodox writer
living in Jerusalem, whose best-
selling books include The Sacri-
fice of Tamar, Sotah and Jephte's
Daughter.
In The Ghost of Hannah
Mendes (Simon & Schuster;
$24), the future of an illustrious
Sephardic family depends on sis-
ters Suzanne and Francesca
Abraham, its last descendants,
finding husbands and having
children.
Their dying grandmother
Catherine da Costa, a wealthy
Manhattan matron, is quite
worried about the situation —
and so, too, it turns out, is her
ancestor Hannah (Nasi)
Mendes, a true historical figure
who lived from 1510-1569.
A Renaissance-era business-
woman, the family matriarch
visits Catherine and helps her sum-
mon the will to persuade Suzanne and
Francesca, two highly independent
career women in their late 20s, to go
off to Europe to fulfill their destiny.
Catherine is willing to pay all
expenses for her granddaughters to
track down the lost pages of a manu-
script written by Hannah Mendes, of
which Catherine has only the begin-
ning. This journey, she hopes, will
bring her granddaughters to an
appreciation for their unique heritage
and save the family line.
The book comprises two stories: a
present-day narrative and Hannah
Mendes' own account of her life. The
manuscript portions are in Italic type,
logical as a way to separate the time
periods, but hard to read at a long
stretch. Ragen helpfully provides fami-
ly trees at the front of the book.
The manuscript details the flight to
Portugal of Hannah's mother's family

10/30
1998

during the Spanish Inquisition. At age
12, Hannah learns to her surprise that
she and her family are conversos, secret
Jews who only pretend to be converts
to Christianity.
With this knowledge, and for the
rest of her life, she dedicates her ener-
gy and financial resources to winning
religious freedom for her people.
The Abraham sisters are strongly
affected as the family story unfolds.
Suzanne spends Shabbat in Gibraltar,
where her new love's formerly converso
family continues to follow Sephardic
traditions. It's a fairytale evening for
this secular Jew. To Suzanne, there is
"a feeling of riches. Not the material
kind, but something else: the sense of
growth, of something flourishing and
healthy. Like a plant with abundant
new leaves ready to unfurl. Alive,
vibrant."
Suzanne and Francesca reunite in
Venice for another brush with the

supernatural before
assimilating their
experiences back in
New York City.
Their grandmoth-
er reminds them:
"We are all part of
something, some-
thing truly great, a
oneness that encom-
passes everything ..."
Ragen stresses -
and nearly overstress-
es — this message for
the millennium. But
lucky for Hannah
Mendes, the sisters
are listening.

Naomi Ragen

❑

— Reviewed by
Esther Allweiss
Tschirhart,
Copy Editor

Author of Sot lit and

Naomi Ragen will speak 8 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 8, at the Kahn Jew-
ish Community Center in West
Bloomfield, sponsored by Jewish
Women International and Temple
_ Kol Ami Sisterhood.

n

`Ree White and Blue'

e's country and she's rock
'n' roll. He's an atheist and
she's Jewish. He's from
Wyoming and she's from
New York. Meet Charlie Blair and
Lauren Miller, the two characters in
Susan Isaacs' Red, White and Blue
(HarperCollins: $25).
Isaacs introduces the characters in a
preamble and informs the reader that
the heroes of this story
are distantly related but
will never discover that
bond. She then delves
into their backgrounds,
presenting an interesting
immigrant experience
with a twist.
On the S.S. Polonia,
Herschel Blaustein and
Dora Schottland, who is
already pregnant by
someone else from her
own shtetl, marry and
begin a new life in Amer-
ica. One part of the fami-
ly stays in New York,
becoming more assimilat-
ed with each generation,
while the other branch
moves to Wyoming,
intermarries, and never

practices Judaism.
Both families become
American after struggling in this new
country.
Lauren Miller, a reporter for The
Jewish News in New York, and Charlie
Blair, an FBI agent in Wyoming, cross
paths trying to uncover the machina-
tions of an anti-Semitic, white radical
group in Wyoming. Their attraction
provides the romantic element to the
s tory.
Like many of Isaacs' previous nov-
els, this is a mystery. And the mystery
part is fast-paced
and interesting.
Unlike her other
books, this is a
family saga, but
Isaacs is neither

-

C7

Susan Isaacs

CD

