Empresses of Seventh Avenue by Nancy MacDonell: Historical Novel

 Fashion in Paris and New York City during WWII

 

Empresses of Seventh Avenue

World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion

by Nancy MacDonell, August 27, 2024, St. Martin's Press, NetGalley

Description

Fashion historian and journalist Nancy MacDonell chronicles the untold story of how the Nazi invasion of France gave rise to the American fashion industry.

The fall of Paris to the Nazis in WWII had a profound effect on the French Legend, the belief that all women in Europe and America wanted only French couture and fashion. With Paris shut down and shut off during the war, American designers came into their own. 

My comments:

When Paris was taken over by the Nazis in WWII, that famous capital of high fashion began a decline that was filled by American couturiers who had previously relied on the French to lead the way in fashion, no longer only copying their styles and looking to Paris for their inspiration, Starting September 1940, American designers began to shine on their own and by 1945 American fashion began to rival that of France, and New York began to challenge Paris as the capital of high fashion.

This amazing historical novel on the growth and emergence of American fashion shows the rise of "democratic" principles in the fashion world - American designers began creating couture for all types of women. Sportswear, ready-to-wear clothes, and mix and match outfits became the new styles for America and signaled a new era of fashion.

This book tells the story of how the Americans could move forward without Paris, for once disregarding the French Legend as the one and only source of haute couture. The first American designers of note are the "empresses of Seventh Avenue." These included Eleanor Lambert, first superstar fashion publicist; Claire McCardell, creator  of American sportswear; designer Elizabeth Hawes, among several others. 

An important book for fashion lovers and for those interested in this aspect of American history, the book details the lives and stories of little remembered designers and couturiers in America who were important to American fashion. A fascinating book that is well worth reading.

What are you reading/watching this week?

Memes: Paris in July 2024,  The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves

WWII Novels: The Last Masterpiece and The Forgotten Bookshop of Paris

 TBR List

I couldn't resist these WWII historical novels, since I love Morelli's other historical novels on art and any novel with the word Bookstore in the title 

The Last Masterpiece by Laura Morelli

Publication, August 1, 2023 by William Morrow & Company

Genre: WWII, historical fiction, art history novel, Italy

In a race across Nazi-occupied Italy, two women—a German photographer and an American stenographer—hunt for priceless masterpieces looted from the Florentine art collections.

In 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery.

When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands.

My review of The Last Masterpiece on Goodreads and NetGalley.

The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris by Daisy Wood

Published October 22, 2022, Avon Books UK

Genre: historical fiction, WWII, Paris

From an exciting new voice in WWII historical fiction comes a tale of love, loss and a betrayal that echoes through generations…

Paris, 1940: War is closing in on the city of love. With his wife forced into hiding, Jacques must stand by and watch as the Nazis take away everything he holds dear. Everything except his last beacon of hope: his beloved bookshop, La Page Cachée.

But when a young woman and her child knock on his door one night and beg for refuge, he knows his only option is to risk it all once more to save a life…

See my review of The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris on Goodreads. 

Post WWII

The Wide World by Pierre Lemaitre

To be published December 5, 2023; Little Brown and Company

Description

The sweeping saga of one prominent French family in postwar Paris, Beirut, and Saigon—an electrifying novel of passion, greed, murder, and revenge....Epic in scope, a vivid depiction of French life in the booming postwar years. (publisher)

What's on your reading schedule this week and/or the rest of the month?injuly202

3Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday. Paris in July 2023

Book Beginning: Leonora in the Morning Light by Michaela Carter

 I'm enjoying reading non-thriller/mystery books thus far , having "given up" reading that genre until mid April! Here's an historical art novel I'm in the middle of:

Leonora in the Morning Light by Michaela Carter, April 6, 2021

Genre: historical novel, Surrealism

Source:  Netgalley

This novel follows the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and the art, drama, and romance that defined her coming-of-age during World War II.

 Artists like Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali, are challenging conventional approaches to art and life. Leonora begins a torrid romance with the artist Max Ernst in Paris, until they are forced to flee France at the beginning of the war. (details from the publisher)

Book beginning: 

Part I

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

Leonora, June 1937, London, England

It was Leonora's first dinner party as a grown woman, and Ursula and she were the hosts. The garden was Ursula's, but the party had been her idea - a garden party lit by the full moon, with white foods and attire because the moonlight called for it, and because Max Ernst was visiting London and had decided to join them. 

Page 56:

 "Father?" She thought of his fiery eyes, his cheeks ruddy with anger, thought of his parting words, May your shadow never darken my door again. You will die penniless, in a garret. "Is there any other way?"

 

Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

It's Monday: Historical Novels

New books on my shelves:


The Huntress by Kate Quinn (see my review)
February 26, 2019, William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: historical thriller


The Gown:A Novel of the Royal Wedding by Jennifer Robson
December 31, 2018, William Morrow
Genre: historical fiction

How to Be Alone: If You Want to and Even If You Don't by Lane Moore
November 6, 2018; Atria Books
Genre: nonfiction, self-help


City of Secrets by Victoria Thompson
November 13, 2018, Berkley
Genre: historical mystery


On the Same Page by N.D. Galland
December 31, 2018, William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: romantic comedy

What books will you be reading this week?
Memes:  
The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,
It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date.
Mailbox Monday. 

Book Review: Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris

Title: Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris

Publication: August 28, 2018, Sourcebooks Landmark

Genre: historical fiction

Objective rating: 5 stars

Lily, a secretary with a newspaper in 1930s Pennsylvania, gets caught up in the story of a photo taken by young reporter Ellis, who snapped a picture of two boys in front of a For Sale sign. The sign was not for the sale of produce or other items, but for the sale of the two boys, a grim indication of the hardship and privation of the times. Scandalized by the implications, Lily takes the photo to the newspaper editor, who assigns Ellis to write the story behind his revealing photo.

Complications arise about the original two children in Ellis's photo, and Ellis makes do by taking another photo, but of different children. Barely bothered by the lie, Ellis makes a name for himself in the newspaper world with the photo and story and rises rapidly in his career.

Lily,  however, gets involved in sorting out fact from fiction as she later helps Ellis to go after the truth of the four children in the two photos, some of whose lives may have been severely affected by Ellis's photos and newspaper story.

The novel is based on a real life photo and its story of children up for sale in 1948, researched by the author, which became an inspiration for her historical novel, Sold on a Monday. Poverty, desperation, and the plight of poor children during those hard times are among the book's themes. Add to that the investigative skills of Lily and the reporter Ellis, who track the story to its conclusion in a suspenseful and heartfelt plot. Well written and researched, with details that bring the characters and the story to life, Sold on a Monday is a novel I would recommend for history buffs and for those interested in a well told tale. 

Book beginning:

Chapter 1

August 1931

Laurel Township, Pennsylvania

It was their eyes that first drew Ellis in.
Seated on the front porch of a weathered gray farmhouse, among the few homes lining the road surrounded by hayfields, two boys were pitching pebbles at a tin can. Ages six and eight at most, they wore no shoes or shirts. Only patched overalls exposing much of their fair skin tinted by grime and summer son The two had to be brothers.... (from an advanced readers copy; final copy may differ) 

56 percent: 

...She considered the disparity of fortunes between bankers and too many of their patrons, those with little choice but to live in shantytowns or to beg on the street. 

Thanks to the author and Netflix for an advance readers copy of the book, for review purposes. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Sunday Salon: New Books This Month plus a Review

New arrivals:
Plum Tea Crazy by Laura Childs, Tea Shop Mystery #19 set in Charleston, March 6, 2018, Berkley.
Genre: cozy mystery


How To Walk Away by Katherine Center, May 15, 2018, St. Martins Press.
Genre: romance, contemporary fiction

I finished and enjoyed reading the historical WWII novel set in Milan and the Italian Alps.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan, published May 1, 2017 by Lake Union.
Genre: historical novel based on the real life experiences of Pano Lello during WWII in Italy.
My comments/review on goodreads: 

This was an intriguing WWII story based on the real life experiences of Pano Lello, who worked with the Catholic underground and the Italian resistance, in Milan and the Italian Alps during the Nazi occupation. Pano Lello was 17 when he first started leading fugitives across the Alps into Switzerland. He later became the driver to a German general so that he could report German movements (the slave camps and what they were working on, munitions locations, etc.) to the insurgents. I found the book important as I know of few books written by the Italians who went through the ordeal, about the partisans and other WWII insurgents in Italy. As they say, the Italians don't like to talk about the war but prefer to forget about it. Engrossing and suspenseful and full of historical information, this book was rated five stars by this reader.

What have you been reading during this wintery January-February?
The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,  It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.

Sunday Salon: Historical Novels and a Review

A new arrival this week, thanks to River Books Press is The Stairway Guide's Daughter by John Burgess, published September 25, 2017. The book is an historical novel set in the Angkor civilization of 12th century Cambodia. 

Description: "...a young woman called Jorani earns her living guiding pilgrims up a two thousand-step stairway to the magnificent cliff-top temple, Preah Vihear. One day, she accidentally witnesses the furtive burning of sacred palm-leaf documents, and is drawn into a succession struggle at the temple. She is forced to choose between loyalty to family and to the son of the abbot, with whom she forms an unlikely bond."

Another book I was excited about is by the new Nobel Prize winner in Literature this year, Kazuo Ishiguro.

I found my 2007 Goodreads review of When We Were Orphans. I reread it recently and got a few more ideas. Here is the original review:

"A book I have wanted to look at again. Set in the 1930s, it's about a young English detective with a faulty memory who returns to wartime Shanghai in 1937 to find his parents who had disappeared there years ago when he was about nine years old. As he is an unreliable narrator, readers have to figure out the puzzle of his past and become detectives themselves to decide what is fact and what is fiction. Christopher meets a Japanese soldier in Shanghai who may or may not be his playmate from years ago, before the war. How Christopher reacts or doesn't react to him and how he ignores his surroundings in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion is part of his strange, delusional persona. This book intrigued me so much, I want to try again to get the hard facts of Christopher's journey, which may not be possible, given his inaccurate memory. Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki, Japan and now living in London, is also author of The Remains of the Day, a Booker Prize-winning novel made into the award winning film with Anthony Hopkins." I'll just add now that on reading it again the past two days, I found the narrator Christopher to be a kind of English/European version of the Ugly American, representing the tunnel vision that ignored the reality of what was going on in Shanghai before and during WWII. If anyone has read  When We Were Orphans, I would love to discuss it and get your ideas here. What have you been reading this week?

Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date Also visit Mailbox Monday..

Review: The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

The Other Einstein, an historical novel by Marie Benedict, October 18, 2016.

Einstein's first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Marić was a brilliant physicist in her own right and may have contributed to his theory on relativity.

Book beginning:
October 20, 1986
Zurich, Switzerland
I smoothed the wrinkles on my freshly pressed white blouse, flattened the bow encircling my collar, and tucked back a stray hair into my tightly wound chignon. The humid walk through the foggy Zurich streets to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Campus played with my careful grooming. The stubborn refusal of my heavy, dark hair to stay fixed in place frustrated me. I wanted every detail of the day to be perfect.

Page 56:
On the evening of his first visit, Helene greeted him with a disgruntled, "Who simply appears on a classmate's doorstep uninvited?"

My comments: The novel is fiction and speculative when it comes to the amount of collaboration Einstein and his wife Mileva may have had in the first four paper he wrote in 1905, including the theory of relativity. Mileva was a physicist in her own right, and a mathematician. But now, there are historians and authors who are looking into how much Mileva did contribute to Einstein's work.

The author has done extensive research on the Einsteins, their meeting at university where Mileva was the only female in Einstein's physics class, his intense courtship of her, their marriage, their moving from one European university to the other during Einsteins rise to the top as a physicist and professor.

Readers might not want to believe that Einstein was at any time selfish with the praise for his research and dismissive of his wife, with whom he had close collaboration in their studies while there were university students, and who could have had serious input into his discoveries. Mileva is shown as gradually being marginalized by Einstein and relegated to simple housewife for him and their two children, this after she had lost her scientific career after an unplanned pregnancy while they were students forced her to give up school and her cherished dream of academics.

Historically, the marriage broke up close to the height of Einstein's career. Part of the divorce agreement was that Mileva would get the proceeds from any Nobel Prize coming from Einstein's work in the future. It's hard to believe he would agree to give that up unless his wife had very well contributed to his work, though unacknowledged and unrecognized.

Recommendation: A fascinating history of the facts of the Einsteins' lives, their marriage, his success, and an intriguing guess at what might have been different for her and for women scientists that came after, if his first wife Mileva had been recognized, even in a footnote, in any of the papers Einstein published in 1905.
 --------------------

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader. 
 

First Chapter: The Odyssey: A Novel of Homer's Odyssey by Patrick Dillon

I loved the Odyssey and am eager to read a new retelling featuring Telemachus, Odysseus's son left behind when his father embarked on his epic journey.

Ithaca: A Novel of Homer's Odyssey by Patrick Dillon, published July 5, 2016 re-tells Homer’s famous poem, The Odyssey, from the point of view of Odysseus’ resourceful and troubled son, describing Odysseus’s extraordinary voyage from Troy to the gates of hell, and Telemachus’s own journey from boyhood to the desperate struggle that wins back his home … and his father. (publisher)

First paragraph:

When I was younger my mother used to tell me stories. Always about my father.

 The time they met - already knowing they were to be married - and spent the night on the mountain above her father's home, and Odysseus cut a sprig of laurel leaves that they swore to keep forever. The first boar he killed, aged sixteen - the age I am now. His friends had been left behind in a frantic chase through the forests. In its first charge, the beast, a monster, gored Odysseus's thigh, but he ignored the pain and hurled himself on the animal with a spear. His friends found him that evening, lying bloodied but alive across the boar's carcass. 

Would you keep reading, based on the first paragraph?

Every Tuesday First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros are hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. Share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book you are reading or plan to read soon. 

Book Beginning: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls, a novel by Martha Hall Kelly,  released April 5, 2016 by Ballantine Books
A story told by three women caught up in WWII whose lives collide as the war rages on: 

• New York socialite Caroline Ferriday working at the French consulate until Hitler invades Poland and sets his sights on France; 
• Kasia Kuzmerick, a teenager and courier for the resistance movement in Poland; 
• Herta Oberheuser, a young German doctor trapped in a government medical position. 

Here are their first chapters:
Caroline, September 1939 - Chapter 1

If I'd known I was about to meet the man who'd shatter me like bone china on terra cotta, I would have slept in. 

Kasia, 1939 - Chapter 2

It really was Pietrik Bakoski's idea to go up to the bluff at Deer Meadow to see the refugees. Just want to set straight the record. Matka never did believe me about that. 

Herta, 1939 - Chapter 3

At midnight, father and I walked six blocks from our basement apartment to a nicer part of Dusseldorf, to the white stone townhomes where servants swept the streets and pinched back geraniums in window boxes. It was late September, but the air was warm still, "fuhrer weather" they called it, since it permitted Hitler success in his campaigns. It had certainly worked with Poland.

Page 56:
Caroline

"Since Washington changed immigration quotas in '24, everything's harder now," Roger said.

The book is based on the life of Caroline Ferriday, one of many "forgotten" heroes of the war. Looks like a book I'll enjoy reading. 

The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Book Review: The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted weekly by Bibliophile by the Sea. Share the first paragraph of your current read. Also visit Teaser Tuesdays meme hosted by Jenn.

The Edge of Lost: A Novel by Kristina McMorris, to be released November 24, 2015 by Kensington

Objective rating: 5/5

Source: advance uncorrected proof for review

First paragraph: (taken from an uncorrected proof. The final copy may differ)

Alcatraz Island October 1937

Fog encircled the island, a strangling grip, as search efforts mounted. In the moonless sky, dark clouds forged a dome over the icy currents of San Francisco Bay. 

"You two check the docks," shouted Warden Johnston, his voice muffled by rain and howling wind. "We'll take the lighthouse. The rest of you spread out." 

More people traded directives, divvying up territory. They were off-duty guards and teenage sons who called Alcatraz their home, an odd place where a maze of fencing and concrete kept families of the prison staff safe from the country's most notorious criminals.
At least in theory.  

My summary and comments: Young Shanley Keagan travels in the mid-1930s from Ireland to New York and finds himself alone after the death of his uncle on board ship. He is unofficially adopted by an Italian-American family until he is grown and can fend for himself. However, Shanley, now known as Tommy Capello, unwillingly and unwittingly becomes embroiled in a crime, trying to save his Italian brother, and finds himself jailed on the infamous Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. 

The second half of the novel details Shanley's  life on Alcatraz and life in general for other inmates as well as prison guards and their families who live on the island. Shanley's friendship with the young daughter of a prison guard and attempts to escape provide suspenseful reading toward the end of the book. 

I enjoyed the story of a young Irish immigrant and his travails as a newcomer to America. The book is well researched and gave me a good look at the hardships of immigration at that time for several ethnic groups, among them the Irish and the Italians. Life on Alcatraz, for inmates as well as the prison staff is fascinating in its detail. 

The story kept me in suspense as you root for Shanley trying to cope with prison life and then deciding to plan escape through the shark-infested and cold waters around Alcatraz, an almost impossible attempt that many had tried unsuccessfully. 

Recommendation: If you have ever wondered about Alcatraz and its history, and you like a good historical novel with a suspenseful plot and interesting characters, read this. 

What do you think of the opening paragraphs?

Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh: Book Beginning

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader. Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. Post it. Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also, visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Am in the middle of reading this one and learning a lot, plus enjoying the rich cast of characters, the setting, and historical plot. 

Flood of Fire (Ibis Trilogy #3) by Amitav Ghosh, published August 4th, 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (U.S.edition)
Genre: historical novel, literary fiction
Source: library 

The third in the Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh. A richly detailed historical novel about the British in India and China during the time of the Opium War in the nineteenth century, told primarily from the point of view of Indians and Chinese. The first in the trilogy, Sea of Poppies, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Ghosh was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. 

Book beginning: 

Havildar Kesri Singh was the kind of soldier who liked to take the lead, particularly on days like this one, when his battalion was marching through a territory that had already been subdued and the advance-guard's job was only to fly the paltan's colours and put on their best parade-faces for the benefit of the crowds that had gathered by the roadside.

 The villagers who lined the way were simple people and Kesri didn't need to look into their eyes to know that they were staring at him in wide-eyed wonder. East India Company sepoys were an unusual sight in this remote part of Assam: to have a full paltan of the Bengal Native Infantry's 25th Regiment - the famous 'Pacheesi' - marching through the rice-fields was probably as great a tamasha as most of them would witness in a year or even a decade. 

Page 56:  

While everyone 's attention was focused on Bhim, Kesri was busy ploughing the poppy fields. Try as he might, he could not stop thinking of his brother's forthcoming journey to Delhi, mounted on a horse, with his weapons slung behind him and a fine new turban on his head. 

Book description: It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war.

One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers, each with their own agenda to pursue. Among them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. 

Flood of Fire follows a varied cast of characters from India to China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat, to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong. (publisher)

 What book are you showcasing this Friday? 

Sunday Salon: Mysteries and a Cookbook

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit Stacking the Shelves

Featuring several mystery novels, plus a cookbook by Amanda Freitag, whom I watch often on the TV Food Channel program, Chopped.

The Chef Next Door by Amanda Frietag, William Morrow
Depraved Heart (Kay Scarpetta #23) by Patricia Cornwell, William Morrow
The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer by Livia J. Washburn, NAL
The Chocolate Falcon Fraud  by JoAnna Carl, NAL
A Likely Story by Jenn McKinlay, NAL
Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue by Victoria Thompson; Berkley
Trimmed with Murder by Sally Goldenbaum, NAL

Currently reading:

A library book I was lucky to find, the third in the Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh. Historical fiction about India and China, the Opium War, and the British in India during the nineteenth century. 

What are you reading at the moment?