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Rituals and Prayers
Under Two Flags follows a young Jewish woman who leaves Boston for Berlin in search of an amazing new life, but instead finds herself in the throes of World War I. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
I discovered Josephine Marzynski’s memoir, With Old Glory in Berlin, when my brother showed up on my doorstep with an original 1918 edition he’d pulled from his bookshelf, and tucked alongside copies of our grandfather’s novels. Although Josephine’s name graced the cover, the foreword was written by the book’s editor, Eliot H. Robinson, our grandfather. As I read the book, it became clear he had done far more than edit. The voice, cadence, and style mirrored his fiction so closely that I surmised he had essentially ghostwritten the memoir.
Josephine’s voice — literally her singing voice — functions as both passion and protection. What does opera represent to you in this story?
Whenever Josephine dared to use her voice, on and off the stage, she spoke and sang of her passions. The arias I chose to include in different scenes underscored the tension and emotional responses of the characters. Josephine found her solace in the beauty of those arias. I sprinkled them in to give her comfort during dark times. For example, I had Josephine sing “Habanera” from CARMEN during her first class at the conservatory in Berlin. The aria is written for a mezzo-soprano, which was within Josephine’s range as a confident and strong woman. Within the libretto, the words mirror Josephine, “Love is a rebellious bird – that none can tame.” Her rebellious nature shines through even with the choice itself. She sings Bizet’s opera in its original French, a language forbidden in Germany at that time during the war.
Were there moments in your research that surprised you or changed the direction of the novel?
After reading Josephine’s memoir, With Old Glory in Berlin, I was struck by what Josephine didn’t include, namely, any reference to her faith. In my research, I discovered she identified as a Jewish woman. Whether she felt it wasn’t relevant or chose to omit it amid the growing undercurrents of antisemitism in 1918, we can’t know. But I found that silence fascinating. In moments of fear and homesickness, people often reach for the rituals and prayers of their faith to anchor them. It felt authentic that she would have done the same, so I wove those quiet expressions of faith into the story to deepen her emotional landscape and sense of identity.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Although I can’t reveal too many details because I’m deep into the research phase, I can share that a hint of the historical event I’ll be writing about is alluded to in Under Two Flags. It’s also set during World War I, alternating between Boston and a foreign city. The expected release date is December 2, 2027. The date is significant in Boston.
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In October 1916, eighteen-year-old Josephine Therese Marzynski leaves Boston for Berlin to pursue her dream of studying opera at Germany’s most prestigious music conservatory. Living with family friends and immersing herself in German culture, she finds unexpected beauty and friendship in the heart of enemy territory.
But when America enters the Great War in April 1917, Josephine’s world transforms overnight-from welcomed student to enemy of the state. Trapped in Berlin as rationing tightens and suspicion mounts, Josephine must navigate daily police check-ins, bureaucratic interrogations, and the constant threat of internment. Her survival depends on German friends who risk their own safety to protect her, while she struggles with divided loyalties between her American identity and the people who have become her chosen family.
Based on the true story from Josephine’s memoir and set against the backdrop of a city slowly starving under the weight of war, Under Two Flags is a gripping tale of resilience, moral complexity, and the transformative power of music in humanity’s darkest hours. As Josephine fights to secure passage home, she confronts impossible choices that will test everything she believes about loyalty, survival, and the true meaning of patriotism.
Under Two Flags: A Novel of World War I
Under Two Flags by Janis Robinson Daly is historical fiction that reads like a staged memoir: Josephine Therese Marzynski, a young Jewish woman from Boston, goes to Berlin in late 1916 to study opera, only to find herself living inside the tightening grip of World War I, where suspicion, rationing, propaganda, and fear seep into everyday life. The book opens in 1918 with Josephine back in Boston, preparing to tell her story with the help of a publisher, framing everything that follows as a deliberate act of witness and persuasion.
What grabbed me first was how Daly builds Josephine’s inner life through concrete moments instead of speeches. The arrival sequence is a gut check. We watch Josephine get inspected like a threat, even while she’s carrying “harmless sheet music,” and we feel the private defiance of her sewing an American flag into her skirt and later hiding it in her pillowcase. The writing leans into bodily details, the hot embarrassment, the cold air, the nervous calculation of what to say and what to swallow. It makes the big theme of “patriotism” feel small and personal, like something you tuck into a hem and hope no one notices.
I also liked the author’s structural choice to treat the novel like an opera in itself, with an Overture, Acts, Scenes, and even musical notations sprinkled in. It could have felt gimmicky, but for me it mostly works because it matches Josephine’s mind. She hears life in cues and crescendos, and she uses performance as survival. There’s even room for humor when it fits, like the bitter, half-laughing talk among women who are stuck eating carrots over and over, trying to make scarcity feel normal for one more day. Those lighter beats do not erase the dread. They just make the dread more believable, because that’s how people cope.
What stayed with me after I closed it was the tension baked into the title. Josephine is always balancing, not just between nations, but between versions of herself: dutiful daughter, ambitious musician, “good girl” who knows when to wink and when to keep quiet. The book is also honest about how identity can be both shelter and target. She’s American, she’s Jewish, she has German roots, and none of those labels stay simple once the war machine starts deciding who gets to be “safe.” I appreciated the grounding too: Daly is upfront that this is fiction inspired by real events and tied to a memoir (With Old Glory in Berlin) connected to her own family, which adds a quiet sense of responsibility to the storytelling.
If you enjoy historical fiction, especially stories that zoom in on one woman’s day-to-day choices inside a huge world event, this one is worth your time. I’d recommend it most to readers who like war-era settings without wanting only battlefield scenes, and to anyone curious about the intersection of art and survival, like how a voice trained for opera can double as armor. If you want an immersive, human-scale WWI novel with music in its bones, you’ll heartily enjoy Under Two Flags.
Pages: 290 | ISBN : 978-1685137328
Hard Evidence
Red Anemones follows a woman’s search for her buried Jewish heritage, unfolding into a multi-generational story of love, resilience, and moral awakening across 20th-century Germany and America. What inspired you to explore your genealogy, and how did that journey shape Red Anemones?
Since I come from a small family, I’ve never been particularly interested in genealogy. There aren’t that many of us that I know about, especially on my mother’s side. Both my parents were the youngest in their families by nearly a generation, so I never met my grandparents or very many extended family members personally on either side, and in most cases, have never seen pictures of them, so I’ve never given any of them much thought.
Then, one cold and rainy Sunday afternoon in late winter of the second year of the COVID crisis, for reasons that involve boredom but otherwise remain a mystery to me, I decided to search my maternal grandmother’s name on a genealogy site, and one thing led to another. I learned that her mother, Bertha Michael, immigrated from Germany, passing through Ellis Island late in the 19th century. Finding that her surname was of Jewish origin, I learned that 446 records containing that surname end in Holocaust death records. Further investigation suggested that 49 of these individuals were likely either directly or indirectly related to my great-grandmother and, by extension, to me. I sat with the emotional chaos and horrifying realization that I had family members who died in Nazi death camps, induced for more than a month, allowing it free rein to sort itself out.
Discovering I was a matrilineal Jew confirmed something I’d long suspected, had hard evidence to support, and was thrilled to know is true. But this was all I knew, because throughout her life, each time I tried to talk to my mother about it, she was struck deaf and refused to acknowledge this reality in her life – and in mine.
Meanwhile, Bertha has taken up rent-free residence in my head and refuses to leave. Ultimately, I determined I had no choice except to write her story as best I could imagine it, given I knew almost nothing about her.
The novel balances historical scope with intimate emotional depth. How did you find that balance in your writing process?
Once I decided to write Bertha’s story, it took on a life of its own, and I just followed the characters wherever they wanted to go, letting them do what they wanted to do and say what they wanted to say. I was merely the vehicle through which they expressed themselves, and I encouraged them to write their own story with the least amount of interference possible from me. They were all very articulate, which made my job much easier.
Nathalie’s internal struggle between duty and freedom feels personal. Was she drawn from your own experiences or someone in your family’s history?
Good question! My best guess is that on some level, nearly every woman of Nathalie’s generation struggled with the conflict between what they wanted for themselves and what society, culture, family, and religion demanded of them. It seems to me this struggle is historical, universal across generations, and endemic to the female experience, and in that sense, there is a personal component to Nathalie’s struggle. However, I made different choices than she felt she could make.
While women today have more freedom, choices, and opportunities than Nathalie did, many continue to face the challenge of balancing what they want for their lives with what others expect of them. What’s very interesting to me on a personal level is that my mother, her sister, and her brother all graduated from major colleges/universities, which was almost unheard of for women, and for many men, in early 20th-century America, and was an expectation that was passed down to me.
The prose feels deliberate and lyrical. Which writers or works most influenced your style and storytelling voice?
This is a hard question to answer because my characters define the style and voice of the story themselves. I focus my efforts on character development, then put the characters in charge of the story, get out of their way, and let them tell it however they want to. If I disagree with where they’re going, I invite them to take a walk so we can discuss it, with a view toward finding common ground we can both live with. My intention always is to create characters who, one way or another, are good storytellers, then let them do what they do best.
In terms of non-fiction, David Marraniss is one of the most beautiful writers I’ve ever read in terms of both style and storytelling ability. His descriptions bring a story to life in ways most non-fiction writers don’t.
Fiction, however, is a little different in that there is much more room for creativity and imagination, and no two authors are alike in terms of how much control over the story and their characters they exert, how much they surrender to their characters, and how much they retain for themselves.
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Natalie Barlow’s journey of self-discovery begins when her estranged mother’s sudden death releases a storm of unrevealed family secrets reaching back to pre-WWI Germany.
As Natalie navigates the complexities of her newly discovered Jewish identity and her ancestral heritage, she comes face-to-face with the early 20th-century German immigrant experience, which included strong anti-German sentiment and deep antisemitism that prevailed across America.
Through diaries and letters her mother saved, Natalie learns of the personal costs this ugly reality extracted from generations of her own family. Ultimately, she must confront the question of her own identity.
Like Israel’s red anemones carpeting the western Negev and Dvira Forest of the Judean foothills year after year, Natalie is determined, no matter the personal costs, to find the courage, resiliency, and passion to embrace the changes that bring new beginnings. Inspired by a true story.
Leaving a Legacy
Diamonds in Auschwitz follows a Jewish woman struggling to survive the brutal realities of Auschwitz who finds a hidden diamond engagement ring in the mud, it brings her a glimmer of hope and a reason to survive. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The idea for this story came to me while reading Wendy Holden’s Born Survivors. In this nonfiction book, she briefly mentions that a woman was able to hold onto her engagement ring during the Nazi occupation and living in the Jewish ghetto. As she entered Auschwitz, she refused to let the Nazis get her ring, so she dropped it outside the gates of the concentration camp. I loved the idea of someone finding the ring while a prisoner there. How could something so beautiful change her life, even though it had no value while living in Auschwitz? The story developed from that image.
It seemed like you took your time in building the characters and the story to great emotional effect. How did you manage the pacing of the story while keeping readers engaged?
I actually wrote all of Samual and Hanna’s story in full first. Then I went back and wrote the second timeline — Rachael and Chaya’s story. I made sure to line up their plotline with Samual and Hanna’s – like having climatic events happen next to each other. It took a little bit of shuffling and organizing!
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I really wanted to dig into the idea of living after death — not necessarily in a spiritual-afterlife kind of way, but as a legacy. My characters are all very concerned with this question: If no one knows I lived, did I even exist? I wanted to show how leaving a part of you behind after death — whether a ring, memories, artwork — can give your life purpose. I also wanted to explore the idea of hope. At first, it’s seen as a poison to Rachael. She believes that hope kills faster than the Germans can. But as she finds a reason to live, even after losing everything, she sees that hope survives through even the worst of times. The ring is the physical embodiment of that hope for her and Hanna.
What is the next book that you are writing and when will that be published?
I’m in the editing stages of my second book. It’s set in Charleston after the Revolutionary War. It’s part a retelling of a Shakespeare tragedy, part murder mystery, and part origin story of a real Charleston haunted legend.
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Rachael is a resilient Jewish woman imprisoned in Auschwitz during World War II, clinging to the memories of her lost family while enduring the harrowing reality of the concentration camp. Amidst the brutality, she uncovers a hidden diamond engagement ring in the mud—its brilliance offering a glimmer of hope and a reason to survive. As she navigates the perils of camp life, Rachael forms a profound bond with Chaya, a young girl also yearning for connection and comfort in their shared despair.Interwoven with Rachael’s tale are the lives of Samual and Hanna, a young Jewish couple planning for their future while navigating the hardships of Nazi-occupied Prague. Distracted by his life in Prague, Samual initially dismisses the growing threats against their community, focusing instead on the engagement ring he dreams of giving to Hanna. As the grip of the Nazis tightens, their plans unravel, yet their love becomes a beacon of resilience amid escalating fear and loss.Diamonds in Auschwitz illustrates how, when everything seems lost, even the smallest treasures can illuminate the path to freedom and connection. Through Rachael and Chaya’s friendship, and Samual and Hanna’s unwavering love, the story reminds us that even in the bleakest times, humanity can shine brightly.
Diamonds in Auschwitz
Diamonds in Auschwitz by Meg Hamand is a gut-wrenching novel set during World War II, centered on Rachael, a Jewish woman struggling to survive the brutal realities of Auschwitz, and Samual, a man trying to build a future in a Prague crumbling under Nazi occupation. Their stories orbit a ring, an engagement ring found buried in the mud, a small glittering symbol of hope, memory, and devastating loss. Through vivid, often painful prose, Hamand paints a picture of resilience, shattered dreams, and the stubborn pulse of humanity in the darkest places.
The writing in this book just grabbed me by the heart right from the first page. Hamand’s descriptions of Rachael clawing through mud, finding what she thinks is just a rock, only to later discover it’s a diamond ring, hit me like a punch to the chest. It’s not just the horror of her surroundings; it’s the tiny spark of something beautiful refusing to be snuffed out. Hamand’s style is sharp but full of heart. No flowery nonsense, no wasted words. I found myself rereading sentences like, “Grief had replaced the marrow of her bones,” because they felt true. You can almost feel the mud in your hands, the cold in your bones, the ache that never quite goes away.
One aspect that particularly struck me was Hamand’s ability to use small, carefully chosen details to convey a much larger emotional impact. Like when Rachael keeps the ring dirty on purpose, leaving a bit of mud on it because it reminds her of her daughter Catarina’s brown eyes. That killed me. It’s such a small thing, but it shows how survival isn’t always about food and shelter; it’s about finding reasons to still feel something when everything around you tells you not to. Samual’s chapters brought a different kind of heartbreak. Watching him risk everything to buy that ring for Hanna, then seeing the city he loved crumble into silence and hatred, felt like watching someone lose their home inch by inch, day by day. I was rooting for him, even knowing full well how history tends to end for characters like him.
There were moments when the book was honestly hard to read. Not because the writing dragged, but because Hamand doesn’t flinch away from showing what Auschwitz really was: a machine for killing hope just as much as it killed people. Scenes like Rachael debating whether to throw herself into the electrified fence, or the eerie way she describes the fog she imagines to block out her surroundings, hit me harder than any graphic violence could have. This book hurts, but it’s the kind of hurt that feels important. Like you’re being trusted to sit with someone else’s pain instead of being shielded from it.
Diamonds in Auschwitz isn’t just a story about survival; it’s a story about memory. About the tiny, stubborn things people hold onto when everything else has been taken from them. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who loves deeply emotional historical fiction, or who wants a story that punches you in the gut but leaves you grateful for having felt it. Fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale or Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See will feel right at home, though “home” might not be the right word when you’re sobbing into a crumpled tissue at midnight.
Pages: 340 | ASIN : B0DXH3GMWW
Watching, A Different Type of Time Travel, Volume 2: Portrait of an Innocent Girl
Jeffrey Jay Levin’s Watching Volume 2 is a mesmerizing journey that marries time travel with emotional resonance. This sequel builds on the intriguing concept of “Watchings” introduced in the first volume, where the protagonist, Josh, undertakes non-corporeal journeys through space and time. This time, he is drawn into the haunting world of Nazi-era Vienna, compelled by a painting and the mysteries surrounding it. The narrative effortlessly balances historical drama with speculative fiction, making it an engaging read from start to finish.
What struck me first about this book was the vivid detail. Levin paints historical settings with such precision that you can almost feel the tension of occupied Vienna or the eerie stillness surrounding stolen art. The prologue, describing the chilling parade of Nazi tanks and soldiers, is visceral. This immersive style carried me through the story, though at times, I wished the pace didn’t lag in Josh’s modern-day contemplations. However, the descriptions of the titular painting and its impact on Josh more than made up for these slower moments.
I also appreciated the emotional depth Levin brought to his characters, especially Josh. His reluctance to revisit his Watching abilities, juxtaposed with his unrelenting curiosity, feels relatable. One standout scene was his interaction with Adrian after his museum experience. Their dynamic captures the perfect mix of love, worry, and exasperation that comes with sharing an extraordinary burden. Similarly, Agent Starling Hebert’s frustration with bureaucracy and sexism within the FBI grounds her character, making her investigative journey all the more satisfying. Levin’s ability to weave personal struggles into the grander narrative of historical intrigue is a triumph.
The pseudo-scientific explanations of Watchings add a fascinating layer to the story, showcasing Levin’s creative imagination and his ability to blend science with fiction. The idea of heightened enzymes and hippocampal activity is unique, giving the concept of time travel a fresh twist. While these sections delve deeply into detail, they provide a thoughtful backdrop for the fantastical elements, enriching the reader’s understanding of the phenomenon.
The exploration of Nazi art theft and the mystery surrounding Gustav Scheiner’s Portrait of an Innocent Girl was fascinating and tied beautifully to themes of loss, memory, and justice. Levin’s extensive research shines here, offering a thought-provoking look at the devastating cultural impact of war.
Watching Volume 2: Portrait of an Innocent Girl is a compelling read for fans of historical fiction, mystery, and time travel. It’s perfect for those who savor rich character development and thought-provoking themes. I’d recommend it to anyone intrigued by history’s shadows and the mysteries they hold.
Pages: 288 | ISBN : 978-1685135935
An Act of Goodness
Until The Stars Align is the story of three young Jewish girls, their daring escape from the horrors of Nazi Germany, and their lives with foster families in England. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I had been aware of the Kindertransport for years. I’ve always thought it was phenomenal that the British rescued 10,000 mostly Jewish children and started the program right after Kristallnacht, realizing what was coming. They let these kids into their country to live there safely, with foster families, away from the impending war. It knocks my socks off every time I think about it. What an act of goodness! Bravo, Britain!
So I came up with the idea of writing about a family impacted by the parents’ decision to send three children, cousins, to safety in England. Once there, the three are split up, and sent to live with different foster families, but they stay in touch and begin to adjust to their new lives. I also wanted to show what the biological parents were going through in Germany as they tried to arrange to emigrate. From all accounts, getting out of the Third Reich before the war started wasn’t easy.
How much research did you undertake for this book, and how much time did it take to put it all together?
I did quite a bit of research for it, as you can imagine! I’ve always been fascinated by the time period, so over the years I’d already read a massive amount of books about it, just out of curiosity. For this story, I read, and in one case re-read, true accounts of children who had been on the Kindertransport. I also consistently fact-checked every little detail that I could get my hands on regarding the time period in both England and Germany. I found out what train stations the transports left from, where they ultimately arrived, the way the children also had to ride ferry boats from Holland to England, how long the ferry took to get there in 1939 – everything like that. I also researched as many details as I could uncover about London during the Blitz, such as what it was like to take shelter from the bombs in the underground stations, how accidents increased during the blackout, or that sandbags lined a lot of the streets. I even found a website listing exactly when and where every bomb attack fell on London and referred to that before writing the part of the story where one of the foster families gets bombed out. I wanted to make this book as accurate a historical novel as possible.
But keep in mind, I’ve adored doing research since all the way back when I was a grammar school girl. For me, it becomes like a treasure hunt of sorts, looking for those elusive bits of information, and then, voila, finding them!
What were some challenges you felt were important to defining your characters in this story?
I created a whole lot of characters for this book in order to show as many different sides of their various experiences as possible.
The three girls have suffered discrimination in Berlin and it’s taken a toll on them, suddenly they’re being sent away from there, but to live with whole new families. It starts off from there, and there’s also the situations happening with the parents left behind in Berlin, the kind foster parents, the English homefront, the Battle of Britain, and more. Above and beyond all else, there’s no mail service between England and Germany once the two countries go to war with one another, so the big pervasive question for these three resettled children in England is what’s going on with their relatives back home?
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’ve worked on a cozy mystery that will be available soon. It’s called There’s No Cure for Impossible. How’s that for a title? It’s about a young gal who learns the toxic friend she wrote off just kidnapped a baby. It was another fun one to write!
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It’s June 1939. Three young Jewish girls, Rosi, her sister Anni, and their cousin Emilie, wait to board the Kindertransport train that will take them away from Nazi Germany, and a life of discrimination, to kind foster families in England. The parents hate to let them go, but realize it’s for their own good, and that it may just be their only chance of survival. When guarded Rosi arrives in London, she’s placed in the East End with a welcoming family of “Pearlies,” and begins to blossom into the happy young girl she was originally born to be, before the Nazis disrupted her world. Anni goes to live with upper-crust foster parents and their shy daughter, and Emilie with a newsagent and his wife. They like their new country and adore their “new parents,” but what has happened back home in Berlin to their “old” parents? By 1945, when there are still no answers, Rosi is determined to find out. Will the stars align to bring about a reunion or is it already too late?
Until the Stars Align
Carolyn Summer Quinn’s Until The Stars Align is a captivating and heartwrenching novel that transports readers to the turbulent era of June 1939. The story follows three young Jewish girls—Rosi, her sister Anni, and their cousin Emilie—on their courageous journey aboard the Kindertransport to England, escaping the looming horrors of Nazi Germany.
Quinn’s storytelling prowess shines through as she delves into the emotional depth and resilience of her youthful protagonists. Rosi’s transformation from a guarded child into a joyous young girl, thanks to the warmth and kindness of her foster family in London’s East End, is particularly moving. Anni and Emilie’s contrasting experiences with their respective foster families further enrich the narrative, illustrating the diverse and complex lives of refugees during this dark period in history. The author excels in bringing her characters to life through vivid and realistic imagery. Each character’s portrayal is intricately detailed, making their journeys both relatable and profoundly moving.
Quinn’s depiction of Nazi Germany’s oppressive atmosphere, with its haunting images of deserted streets and ominous shadows, contrasts sharply with the sense of refuge and renewal in England, enveloping readers in the historical context and making the characters’ experiences deeply tangible. The narrative’s emotional resonance is heightened by Quinn’s sensitive and nuanced approach to the characters’ struggles and triumphs. The pacing, though occasionally deliberate, adds to the depth and authenticity of the storytelling, maintaining a gripping and emotionally charged momentum throughout.
Until The Stars Align is a testament to Quinn’s remarkable ability to craft a story that is both compelling and uplifting. The book offers a powerful and touching tribute to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity, capturing the essence of hope and survival amidst despair. Quinn’s masterful storytelling and rich, immersive world-building make this novel an unforgettable reading experience, leaving readers both moved and inspired.
Pages: 205 | ASIN : B0D62DRJZS
