“It took awhile to find that voice,” she concedes. She began the book when he was 12, deciding, “I want to write from that place.” Thus, Jack is the narrator. Newman said that in addition to her research - which included reading travelogues - her father’s tales about wartime life in New York City also provided rich background material, including detailed descriptions of schools he attended as a youngster, his apartment on Dyckman Street, how he listened to the radio and other vignettes of everyday life.Īnother person who proved key in helping Newman craft the novel: her son. How Jakob and Jack meet, bond and concoct a master plan for rescuing a boatload of Jewish refugee children bound for New York unfolds in Newman’s captivating, imaginative novel. “The book is so much about denials,” says Newman, 60. His mother, meanwhile, lives in a fog of despair, hardly aware of her son’s comings and goings. Jack’s father died in an accident, and the young boy has difficulty accepting it. Jakob relates his life story to 12-year-old Jack, a Catholic youth who also lost “someone who was dear to him,” says Newman. He never saw Rebecca again, though he sent her messages by carrier pigeon, in hopes they would reach her in Paris, where he imagined that she lived. At her insistence, and after she disappeared one day, Jakob fled, finagling a first-class ticket onto the St. Though sickly and suffering from a bad heart, she was well aware of the fate of Jews in Berlin as the Reich took over. That character is Jakob, a lonely, broken man who left behind the love of his life, Rebecca.

“I am going to write a novel and put a character on the St. Newman, who had always thought of the United States as “the good guys” in World War II, found the saga of the St. However, with the German invasion of Western Europe, an estimated 254 perished. Louis returned to Europe, where the refugees eventually were resettled outside Germany. Only 26 people were allowed to disembark in Havana, and the U.S. Unfavorable circumstances - including anti-Semitism - intervened. visas and expected to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States. Louis left Hamburg, Germany, for Havana on May 13, 1939. With 940 aboard - most of them Jews fleeing the Nazis - the St.

Mary by Janis Cooke Newman