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Emerald's Hope |
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Born at the turn of the century, Emerald O'Hearn was orphaned at five in Belfast's slums. Almost a victim of her guardian, she runs away and is taken in by nuns. She finds her lost brothers and moves to Dublin to join them. She becomes a nurse, marries a man who is killed in World War I, and becomes involved with the Irish rebellion of 1917. She has a brief and passionate affair with the Irish revolutionary, Michael Collins. When one of her brother's is killed in Spain, she follows the other to America. There, she meets Michael Scanlon, a man of incredible ambition. Together they sire a dynasty and fight for political success. Emerald never looses her idealism or her passion as she fights for justice and tries to better the lives of the underprivileged.
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Succession |
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Clara Marina Tonelli is a woman of ideas, intelligence and strength. Her father, Agosto, lifted himself from the poverty of the Italian immigrant community to the power of Wall Street. But who would be his successor?
Clara Marina is her father's daughter but she finds herself fighting against the mores of a community constrained by male dominance. Even the other women in the family seem to stand against her. This is the story of an Italian family of ambition and fortune; of that family's daughter and her struggle to carry on for her father, and still satisfy the man she loves. From New York's Italian community in the early 1900s, to Mussolini's Italy, to Wall Street and on to California - this is a family saga of triumph and tragedy.
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Bylines |
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Each chapter of this book sets the scene with a headline, very slightly changed from the real headline or headline story, appearing in the Chicago Tribune on that date. Dennis and I poured over microfilm for hours in the Cornell University Library.
The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th Century. In this novel the heroine asks Adolph Hitler, while interviewing him, "What will history say about the Jews?" Not realizing her background, he shrugs off the question with, "Who remembers the Armenians?" It was a real question. It was a real answer.
Earlier, I talked about autobiographical elements in our books. Early in my own career I did live with an older, alcoholic writer. My family did come from a small town in upstate New England where many Armenians settled. I also worked in the Salinas Valley one summer. Fresno and the valley are one of the major Armenian settlements in the United States. When I worked at the University of California, we received a large collection of Armenian books that were turned over to me to check against library holdings. Among the books were a bundle of postcards written by an elderly Armenian gentleman who had returned to Soviet Armenia in search of this family.
Written in the late 1930s they grew more and more touching - then they just stopped. I don't know if he survived, I don't know if he found his family. I do know his was a real 20th Century story of a life ripped apart by the violence of war and revolution.
Jo Gregorian's fictional life, and the lives of many real Armenians, was put back together as they prospered in the United States and Canada triumphing over one of the blackest periods in modern history.
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Honor the Dream |
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Honor the Dream begins in 1910 in Germany. Anna Maria Von Bock dreams of being a lawyer but World War I tears her family apart and she leaves Berlin for America. Following the path of many German Americans, she goes to Milwaukee. Her desire to study and practice law is blocked at every stage, but she carries on, finally moving to Chicago. This is the period of the Chicago Renaissance; the Chicago of Clarence Darrow, of Frank Lloyd Wright and of Carl Sandburg. It is also the Chicago of political foment and spectacular crimes, of the early beginnings of Civil Rights Law, and the birth of the ACLU. Were there women lawyers in this time period? One of the founders of the ACLU was Crystal Eastman, a talented dedicated lawyer from Milwaukee. Honor the Dream is a story that could have happened, and in part did. Its fictional heroine finds success, satisfaction and of course, the love of a good man.
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The Glory Years |
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Margaret Szilard's mother, Anna, exists in the world of the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire. She must choose between breaking an aristocratic code and the man she truly loves. Margaret, her daughter, flees a terrible forced marriage, to find freedom and opportunity in Manhattan. She becomes a fashion designer and moves to Hollywood where reality, ambition, and dreams mingle. This is a tale of the mores and morals of a time past, and it is a study in good and evil as each generation of Szilard women fights to leave the past and find love and independence.
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