Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr by Margaret Porter

Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr. Margaret Porter. Gallica Press. October 2018. 378 pp. ISBN#:  9780990742036.

“I enjoy drawing up plans and designing and making things…They don’t realize that Hedy Lamarr is an invention.”  Yes, Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful actress but also an intelligent woman who invented a war weapon that was almost used to defeat the Germans in WWII. 

Born Hedy Kiesler, an Austrian, Jewish woman, she aspired to be a wonderful actress, but the films she chose to act in first was Ecstasy.  Hedy appears naked and fakes an orgasm which equally gained her universal praise and scorn in the earlier years of the 20^th Century.

She marries a German munitions dealer who soon becomes her jailor.  She winds up escaping from him after realizing she couldn’t ignore her yearning to become a full-time actress.  Hedy signed a contract with Louis Mayer after much haggling but seems frustrated by not being given films she feels are equal to her acting abilities.  Still, her looks and talents catapult her to fame and stardom status!  Her love life is certainly interesting if not very stable. 

Margaret Porter gives a deft depiction of the lives of actors and actresses who more frequently “use” each other for better scripts or positions in the middle of a turbulent time of history with the rise of Adolph Hitler and the beginning of WWII.  Hedy moves through six marriages and has several children, including one adopted son.  She is also an avid gardener and inventor.  She generously contributes her time for the war by selling bonds and attending clubs to sign autographs and dance with soldiers and sailors on leave.  

She researches science facts to create the torpedo that can attack without being detected.  The work behind this creation is no small feat and highly complex.  Hedy herself is a complex character, always searching for deeper meaning and creation, never satisfied.   Her private and public life parallel the historical and political turmoil of Europe and America – dramatic and life-changing!

Enjoy the scenes where Hedy stuns observers with her appearances in elegant gowns and hats, once an actress, always an actress!  Yet also relish the brilliance of her thinking as she seeks solitude to do research and create a soda machine and later a war weapon to be used against Germany.  Most of all, just revel in the enigmatic and intelligent talent of one of the most famous actresses in the Gilded Age of American Theater!  Highly recommended!

Max's Diamonds: A Novel by Jay Greenfield

Max’s Diamonds: A Novel.  Jay Greenfield. Chickadee Prince Books. May 2016. 344 pp. ISBN #: 9780991327423.

Paul Hartman, his parents and many in their family are refugees from the hell created by Adolf Hitler.  In short, they are Holocaust survivors!  Think you’ve heard it all before!  Stop in your tracks – you haven’t!  Jay Greenfield’s first novel is reality.  The appearance of Paul’s Uncle Max is a life-changing event for Paul.  Two aspects of Uncle Max’s life remain with Paul forever, the numbers etched into Uncle Max’s arm and the diamonds Uncle Max owns and spreads throughout the family.  These items are evidence of the worst kind of evil one can imagine!  They permeate the family with guilt as survivors and victims who deserve more of life’s wealth because of what they have endured.  In between these searing scenes are moments of intense beauty which Paul and his girlfriend, and later wife, find in playing music.  Should one play Wagner, the enemy of the Jews, to show all that Jews survived and are now their own masters? Yes, Wagner, the music that was played when selections were daily made of who was to go to the gas chambers.  The novel is replete with decisions of a like-minded nature!

For Paul, it seems for every few steps he moves ahead in his career and family life he must take multiple steps backwards laced with shared guilt and moral obligations.  As the story progresses, we learn how Max acquired those diamonds in the concentration camp and what he did with them.  Harrowing story, indeed!

Paul becomes a lawyer whose State Supreme Court clerkship becomes compromised because of his family background.  On and on the same stop-and-go scenes follow, eventually causing the failure of two marriages, barriers with relatives because of a deed Paul committed after meeting Max and before Max’s death.  All his relationships become tainted and the reader can empathize with his frustration and desire to get it all healed and behind, if that is possible at all!

Max’s Diamonds… is a startling, riveting work of historical fiction that each reader may never forget.  It’s a thriller spawned by an evil reality of one man but passing on to all the victims tied into that evil man’s existence!

Amazing read that this reviewer highly recommends!

Lilac Girls: A Novel by Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls: A Novel.  Martha Hall Kelly. Random House Publishing Group. April 2016. 496 pp.  ISBN#: 9781101883075.

Caroline Ferraday comes from a rich family and has no need to work.  However, she is a volunteer at the French consulate and is passionately dedicated to helping French refugees and especially raising money and clothing for French children without family or friends.  For the Germans under Hitler are ravaging Europe and is now headed for France, causing many to attempt to flee to America.  Caroline is about to become enamored with a married well-known actor, whose family will also become victims of Hitler’s aggressive policies.

The reader needs a very strong stomach for what follows.  Kasia Kuzmerick wants to act like a grown-up and begins to accept low-level jobs for the Polish resistance.  One admires her courage and tenacity and yet every move she makes seems to foreshadow eventual capture and imprisonment.

On the other hand, we meet a very young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, whose training has been limited to dermatology since female doctors are almost unheard of in Germany.  Desperate to use her knowledge and skills, especially as a surgeon, she signs up for government service and winds up in the Ravensbruck concentration camp for women.  At first she is appalled at the horrors she witnesses and is expected to perform herself.  Eventually she succumbs to cooperation because her own imprisonment is the only option left for refusing to obey orders.  What is fascinating about this story is the fact that both women must do things they abhor in order to survive.  The consequences of these choices, however, turn out quite different after the war eventually ends.  Being a survivor isn’t always enough of an excuse.

These women are outstanding heroines in their fierce belief in hope, hope they will come out of their experiences whole somehow and hope that justice will prevail.  Such an attitude is easy to blithely state when detached from intense suffering but indomitably brave when called to compromise or silently live in physical, mental and emotional agony.

Lilac Girls: A Novel is a novel every reader will never forget.  That, after all, is the purpose of recounting the realities of WWII and the Holocaust, including those non-Jews who bore the ferocious, tyrannical policies of Hitler carried out by his henchmen and women.  As painful as the story described hits the reader, it is a starkly told tale that must be told, lest we forget! Highly recommended historical fiction!

Secrets of a Charmed Life: A Novel by Susan Meissner

Secrets of a Charmed Life: A Novel.  Susan Meissner. Penguin Publishing Group (USA). February 2015. 416 pp.  ISBN#: 9780451419927.

“You said wishing something doesn’t make it come true. Doing it does. Someday I hope you will be proud of me.”  These words were penned by Isabel MacFarland many years ago and which she is now sharing in an interview with American scholar Kendra Van Zant.  While Kendra pictures a perfect world where everything works out for the better, what she hears from Isabel is anything but perfect.  This is the story of choices made out of a determination to shape one’s own destiny, choices that call for desperate decisions affecting more than one’s own future.

Emma dreams of creating bridal dresses.  Her persistence leads to her first job as a seamstress for the owner of a bridal shop.  When Emma shows her own designs to the owner of the shop, Mrs. Crofton hires her immediately and says she may have a connection to help Emma meet with a designer who might be interested in these gorgeous bridal designs.  WWII, however, interferes and Emma and her sister Isabelle are forced as children to be evacuated to the British countryside for safety from the German bombs falling on London and other British cities on a daily basis.  At least that’s what they are told even though the bombings are as yet infrequent.  Emma has no support from her mother; in fact her mother acts as if she resents Emma because giving birth to her meant the end of her mother’s own dreams of a promising future. 

So begins a harrowing story in which Emma returns to London to explore an opportunity.  An act of sisterly betrayal followed by the most intense bombing imaginable causes Emma and Julia to be separated for years.  During those years, Emma will discover the secret behind her real father’s identity, will fall in love and lose it just as quickly.  Years later Emma will receive a letter from her sister that makes Emma realize the stark reality of that choice made so long ago.  In that time Emma has fashioned a completely new identity as well as a very successful business.

Secrets of A Charmed Life: A Novel is title that belies the mystery, danger, and passion behind the quest for a career creating beauty for that one special day in a woman’s life, her wedding!  The catastrophic events of the London Blitz combined with a dysfunctional family reeling from previous mistakes make for riveting reading!  Highly recommended historical fiction!