THE GERMAN BRIDE
Joanna Hershon
Ballantine Books
Fiction
ISBN: 9780345468451

I loved THE OUTSIDE OF AUGUST by Joanna Hershon, so I jumped at the opportunity to read and review her current work of fiction, THE GERMAN BRIDE. Although I didn’t like the latter as much as I did the former, both books are written beautifully. The one big difference is that while THE OUTSIDE OF AUGUST is set in contemporary times, THE GERMAN BRIDE is a historical novel, taking place in the 1860s. There’s almost an epic-like feel to it, with the story set initially in Germany and then moving on to America.

Eva Frank and her sister, Henriette, are two young ladies who are having their portraits painted at the start of the story. They are both unmarried and live a life of ease with their parents. Henriette is the older of the two, but it is Eva who catches the eye of the painter, and soon the two are having a secret love affair.

After a tragic accident occurs one night, which fills Eva with tremendous guilt, she hastily marries (after a very brief courtship) a Jewish German merchant, Abraham Shein, who claims he has built a fortune in America. She leaves her home in Germany for the unknown American Wild West with a man she barely knows, hoping to forget the tragedy and move on with her life.

While she thinks she has escaped this terrible incident, it still haunts Eva in many ways, as does her affair with the painter. She also realizes, after many years of hardship in America, that what Abraham promised in terms of a home life of comfort and ease was not to be. She struggles with her marriage, her desire to create a baby, and her need to live in some sort of luxury instead of the ramshackle place they have in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It doesn't help that her husband is rarely home, and it isn't for a long while that Eva understands what is enticing him away.

While the reader may not connect with the characters, one will agree that Hershon does a magnificent job bringing to life the backdrop of the American West. One can imagine the hardships that immigrants faced from the time they left the port in Europe to the moment they set foot on American soil, often dreaming of a better life but never finding it. The author uses Eva to paint the story of the Jewish German immigrant, in particular those who settled in New Mexico and the harsh lives they led to achieve some sort of a livelihood.

I can imagine that Eva's story doesn't end here, and I would be delighted if Hershon continues it in a sequel. Although difficult to read at times, I appreciated the beauty of Hershon's writing and her success in capturing this part of American history through the fictional lives of Eva Frank and Abraham Shein.

    --- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton (Ratmammy@lofton.org)

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