Downloadable presskit
Downloadable Press Kit
In the Wake of Madness: My Family’s Escape from the Nazis is a Riveting Read More Relevant Than Ever
In 1940, thousands of Jewish refugees descended upon sunny Lisbon, desperately scrambling to acquire visas to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. Among them were Elsa and Saly Levi, a young German-Jewish couple who thought they had found safety in neutral Belgium - until Nazi bombs began to fall. Their eyes were fixed on America, but anywhere would do, as long as they were far from the Nazis’ reach. But there were others to consider: Saly’s parents were trapped in Vichy France, and Elsa’s mother in Berlin.
In the Wake of Madness captures heartache and hope as history unfolds, from the pre-war period in Germany to 1950 New York. Armed with a wealth of personal documents, the author pieces together the details of her family’s nail-biting escape, and the long-lasting effects of the diaspora. Her journey takes the reader to Germany, Belgium, Portugal, New York, Japan, Chile, Britain and Palestine as WWII scattered loved ones across the globe. It is a powerful true story with all the twists and turns of real life - and chilling warnings about the growth of fascism and hate - a story more relevant than ever as antisemitism and other forms of hate speech and hate crimes are on the rise here in the United States and around the world.
Ebooks are available exclusively on Amazon.com upon release in February 2024. Paperback copies may be ordered at any brick and mortar and on-line bookstore.
Burying My Dead Gives Portland History a Novel Twist
Intrigued by genealogy? Curious about local history? Riveted by a tale with twists and turns? Burying My Dead delivers.
The novel begins on Halloween night at Portland’s Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery. Oregonian reporter Murphy Gardiner has no idea that a chance encounter there will ignite a yearlong search to unravel a puzzling family tradition, plunging her into Oregon history and the tangled lives of a photographer, a suffragist, and a Chinese girl at the heart of the mystery.
Bettie created these characters to epitomize the time period of the 1870s. Simeon Small, an aspiring photographer, is the sexton at East Portland’s Lone Fir Cemetery, a job he has taken to be close to his wife, who resides at Dr. Hawthorne’s Asylum nearby. Emerson Asher, a writer and suffragist of Irish and Jewish heritage, works at the Asylum. Zhou Zhen is a Chinese girl sold by her parents in Guangdong and forced into prostitution in the strange land called Oregon. Their lives entangle in unexpected ways.
Burying My Dead has been a popular choice for Portland area book groups and has been recommended on a national podcast for those who plan to visit Oregon. It is available as a ebook on-line or in print at Broadway Books in Portland.