Reading in the Garden

Experimental Rabbits .  This historical fiction brings to light the medical experiments conducted on the prisoners of Ravensbrück, the all-female concentration camp in WWII Germany.   Two characters are based on actual people:  Herta Oberheuser was one of the doctors who performed the experimental surgeries on the ladies who became known as “Rabbits,” because they were medical guinea pigs and for the fact that afterwards they could barely walk and had to hop around.  The other real person was Caroline Ferriday, a New York City philanthropist who sent aid to French orphans and later helped the “Rabbits” obtain medical treatments years after the war.  This book was unnerving to read yet so engrossing it was hard to put down.  Very well written. Further Non-fiction Reading About the Holocaust: Night  by Elie Wiesel  In Our Hearts We Were Giants   by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann  Historical Fiction set in WWII:   Sarah’s Key  b

  Bonanza of Books by Black Authors That Are the Bomb  In a quick tribute for Black History Month, I’m listing  SOME OF MY   FAVORITE  READS  by black authors. Fiction   My Sister, the Serial Killer by  Oyinkan Braithwaite    The Secret Lives of Baga Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin   The Seasons of Beento Blackbird by Akosua Busia   The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead – Pulitzer Prize Winner Wench   by Dolen Perkins-Valdez How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan Non-Fiction Born a Crime by Trevor Noah – Memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah - Memoir Left to Tell: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Rwandan Genocide by Immacul é e Ilibagiza - Memoir Slave: My True Story by Mende Nazer – Memoir The Last Black Unicorn  by Tiffany Haddish – Memoir Memorial Drive by Natasha Threthewey – Memoir Beneath the Tamarind Tree by Isha Sesay  Classics: Roots by Alex Haley Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston The Color Purple by Alice Walker Beloved  by Toni Mor

  Impossible, Forbidden Love .    Goosebumps! This is more than a story about German occupation in the Channel Islands during WWII—it’s also about the impossible, forbidden love of a German officer and a Jewish woman trapped in a dangerous world where there are no true winners. Based on a true story, they are forced to be enemies and must go to great lengths to hide their love.  Was it all for nothing? This book revived my desire to visit the Channel Islands.  I first dreamt of visiting it after reading one of my favorite books of all time— The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows .   Now more than ever I want to see the islands where the defenseless population was taken over by Germans, the place where the Organization Todt used slave labor to complete their engineering projects, the place where characters like Hedy, Dorothea, Juliet and Dawsey found a place in my heart.    Guernsey Island is also where Victor Hugo lived in exile for 15