By Taylor Jasmine | On March 9, 2015 | Updated September 25, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle by Betty Brainerd, February, 1935: In Come and Get It by Edna Ferber is a lusty and dramatic saga of life in the Wisconsin north woods.
Before mentioning anything else you have to say about Edna Ferber, it’s that she has been places and she has seen things. And then, having seen things, she proceeds to picture them for others in a manner that is so natural and clear that you, too, begin to see them, and to live them. But not like Edna Ferber sees them. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On March 7, 2015 | Updated February 21, 2025 | Comments (0)
From the review of A Peculiar Treasure by Edna Ferber in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 12, 1939: Edna Ferber‘s hallmark is a succession of successes, her attainment is the climb to the pedestal upon which she is recognized as one of America’s most proficient and intuitive novelists.
Her philosophy is always that of the typical, middle-class Jew whose faith is American democracy.
Edna Ferber comes down to us today in autobiographical form to capture again the pulse of a reading public avid for her understanding and again to pluck upon the heartstrings of a nation she knows so well. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On March 4, 2015 | Updated September 25, 2022 | Comments (1)
Ship of Fools by noted American short story master and novelist Katherine Ann Porter (1890 – 1980) was published in 1962. The sprawling novel took her more than twenty years to write and was highly anticipated by critics and readers alike. Though critical opinions were mixed, it was the best-selling novel of her career and of 1962 overall.
Set before the start of World War II, it follows the voyage of a group of disparate passengers on their way from Mexico to Europe.
The sprawling story, which Porter originally anticipated would be a novella, was started in 1940. It features large cast of international characters on the German freight and passenger ship, the Vera, most on a pleasure trip from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany. There are also more than eight hundred Spanish workers in steerage. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On March 2, 2015 | Updated July 24, 2025 | Comments (0)
Rumer Godden (1907 – 1998) was a novelist and memoirist born in England and raised mainly in India at the height of colonial rule. It was her own life that inspired the colorful, dramatic stories she wrote.
Though no longer as widely read as she was during her lifetime, Godden’s works are still very much admired. She was an acclaimed bestselling mid-twentieth century author, nine of whose books were adapted to major films.
Her first novel, Black Narcissus, was published in 1939 to critical acclaim, and like most all the major novels that came after, was a bestseller. The story is set in a cloister high in the Himalayas. A group of nuns in a convent in northern India is the backdrop for a story of cultural conflict and obsessive love. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On March 1, 2015 | Updated September 20, 2022 | Comments (0)
Nobody’s Family is Going to Change (1974) was the last book by Louise Fitzhugh to be published, just before her untimely death. The acclaimed author of Harriet the Spy was said to be distraught over mixed reviews of the book, and died at the age of forty-six, not long after its publication.
Today, with many more Black authors in the Middle Grade space, it’s unlikely that a white author would undertake such a foray into the life of an upper-middle-class African-American family. But at the time, Louise Fitzhugh’s novel seemed a bold and fresh stereotype-busting story dealing with race and gender. Read More→
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