Product Description

A gripping epic about the great moral struggles of the Civil War. How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862 he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.

After that night, will Jacob ever speak for himself? The answer comes when his commanders send him on another mission—this time not to murder a spy but to marry one.

A page-turner rich with romance and the history of America (North and South), this is a book only Dara Horn could have written. Full of insight and surprise, layered with meaning, it is a brilliant parable of the moral divide that still haunts us: between those who value family first and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13310 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393064926
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A Civil War spy page-turner meets an exploration of race and religion in 19th-century America in Horn's enthralling latest. Jacob Rappaport, the 19-year-old scion of a wealthy Jewish import-export family, flees home and enlists in the Union army to avoid an arranged marriage. When his superiors discover his unique connections, he is sent on espionage missions that reveal an American Jewish population divided by the Mason-Dixon line, but united by business, religious and family ties. After being sent to assassinate his uncle in New Orleans on Passover, Jacob's next assignment proves even more daunting: marry the feisty Confederate spy Eugenia Levy. What starts out as a dangerous game for both Jacob and Eugenia ends up being a genuine romance, fraught with the potential for peril, betrayal, tragedy and redemption. Horn propels the love story at a thriller's pace; the mix of love and loyalty played out in a divided America is sublime. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Sometimes it only takes one night to change lives forever, often in ways that people only appreciate when reflecting from the distance of time. Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, will forever ponder the age-old question asked around the Seder table: How is tonight different from all other nights? On Passover 1862, Jacob is ordered by a Union commander to kill his uncle (who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln), and this particular evening changes forever his view of religious tradition, love, and integrity. Horn, the award-winning author of The World To Come, has written a stunning historical novel that will challenge readers' preconceptions as they learn about the role of Jewish Americans during the Civil War. Her tale of Confederate Hebrew spies skillfully puts a new spin on a time period that has been researched and written about extensively. This timely book, coming on Lincoln's bicentennial year, is recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/08.]—Marike Zemke, Commerce Twsp. Community Lib., MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wendy Smith On the eve of Passover in 1862, Jacob Rappaport finds himself "inside a barrel in the bottom of a boat, with a canteen of water wedged between his legs and a packet of poison concealed in his pocket." A Union soldier in New Orleans, Jacob has been ordered to murder his uncle, who his superior officers say is involved in a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Killing Uncle Harry "would do honor to your race," they tell Jacob. In their eyes Jacob is first and foremost a Jew, tainted by his ethnic kinship with Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's secretary of state. In the slam-bang opening pages of her superb third novel, Dara Horn masterfully establishes both a gripping plot premise and a fascinatingly conflicted protagonist. She sends Jacob roaming across a war-torn landscape to encounter a marvelous variety of characters, each imagined with empathy and depth. The relatively conventional storytelling here is quite different from the kaleidoscopic narrative techniques Horn employed in her previous books, "In the Image" and "The World to Come," but her scope is just as ambitious, her talents as prodigious as ever. The author sets up a complex web of metaphors by launching Jacob's torturous odyssey at Passover, the feast celebrating the children of Israel's liberation from slavery. Images of confinement and escape suffuse the text, and oppression is not a distant memory for immigrants from the Old World such as is his father. Yet Southern Jews see no irony in their support for a society that enslaves Africans. Jacob is appalled by their blindness, particularly after he observes a slave auction where a young couple cling to each other, pleading not to be separated. But he does come to some understanding of his fellow Jews when, while in flight from Confederate authorities, he takes refuge in a Jewish cemetery in Virginia. All his ancestors are buried in Europe: "He had grown up in a world without graves -- and in a land, he now knew, that wasn't yet fully his, unsanctified by death." Looking at gravestones stretching back over generations, he sees "the first Hebrew glory since ancient times . . . the glory of their finding their own promised land." That cemetery contains the forebears of Jeannie Levy, the Confederate agent Jacob has been sent to Virginia to marry and betray. For a writer who previously displayed little interest in traditional plotting, Horn goes at it with gusto here. An intricate chain of circumstances takes Jacob to Richmond, armed with a letter from the actor Edwin Booth (brother of future Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth) that enables him to gain the confidence of Judah Benjamin in the war's final months. The coincidences and fortuitous encounters might seem a bit much, but they work because they're enfolded in the compelling depiction of a man who goes astray and must decide if there's any way he can atone for his actions. Slavery is monstrous, Jacob is sure, and the society built on it is cruel and delusional. How could he let these judgments lead him to murder and betrayal? He had choices, he comes to realize; he could have said no when asked to do things that violated his personal sense of right and wrong. As America tears itself apart, he learns to cherish the heritage he once strove to escape, the age-old Jewish debate "about how best to be human, about the most trivial and most horrifying obligations involved in repairing a broken world." He wins the right to forgiveness when he finally summons the courage to say no, and for the first time he truly knows who he is. That radiant moment affirming the power of love takes place on a hill overlooking a city in flames. Horn is too gifted and ambitious an artist to settle for easy reassurances or a facile happy ending; she instead offers her readers the deeper satisfactions of complexity and generosity as she limns a world of agonizing, implacable moral ambiguities and guides her imperfect yet lovable protagonist toward a tentative redemption.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Moral Struggles
Horn, Dara. "All Other Nights" A Novel", W.W. Norton, 2009.

Moral Struggles

Amos Lassen


Just in time for the Passover season, we get Dara Horn's "All Other Nights" an epic novel that deals with moral struggles during the American Civil War. Jacob Rappaport is a Jewish officer in the Union army. He has been commanded to murder his uncle who is plotting the assassination of the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The date for the murder is set for Passover, 1862. Upset, Jacob realizes what he has to do but that is just the beginning. He realizes that he can no longer speak for himself and that he must do what he is ordered to do.
His next assignment is to go on another mission but this time there is no murder plot; instead he must marry a spy. Dara Horn gives us a new look at Civil War history. We see it through the eyes of Rappaport and we also get a taste of the moral divide that in many ways is still with us. Is it family that is the most important thing in our lives or are we obligated to the dedication to our country?
This is a fascinating character study which is brought to us through the layers of history. I was held captive by the writing style and the character of Jacob Rappaport. Horn gives us a fine novel that, even though it is set in a different time, deals with many of the issues with which we deal today.

"On some other night...everything would be different"
The 'Four Questions' text asks "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Jacob Rappaport is assured in "All Other Nights" that "What you allow to happen on one night will happen on all other nights as well." Which is it? Jacob's redemption hangs in the balance.

Ms. Horn has written a wonderfully researched, compelling piece of historical fiction. Who thinks about Jews in America during the Civil War, much less Jews as spies or Confederates? If you'd like to go to a place and time about which you've not given a moment's thought, check out this book. Beautifully written, it's an absorbing read and thought-provoking as well. Ms. Horn joins Anita Diamant as a top-notch chronicler of Jewish life as it may well have been.

I love Dara Horn's books, but I found this one disappointing.
This review will not have any spoilers.

One of my favorite books is Dara Horn's first novel, In the Image. It's simply marvelous. Her next book, The World to Come, was also a winner, although I didn't like it quite as much.

Having enjoyed those books, I was really, REALLY looking forward to this one. And I am sorry to say that I was really disappointed with it, and I was surprised that my reading experience was so different than so many other reviewers.

This is the story of a young Jewish man, Jacob Rappaport, who becomes a spy for the Union, during the Civil War. He is chosen for this role, because he has certain important family connections with people in high places in the Confederacy.

Jacob is sent on several morally ambiguous assignments, and he dutifully complies. He is eventually sent to stay with relatives who are suspected of being Confederate supporters and spies, and his mission is to marry one of the young daughters. What he didn't count on was falling in love.

I did learn some interesting information in this book, especially about the roles and prevalence of Jews on both sides of the conflict during this war. I had no idea that the Confederate Secretary of State was a Jewish man named Judah Benjamin. What the author does well, is show that despite allegiances to either side, Jews were still considered outsiders; often treated with derision and suspicion.

I also thought that the author did a good job of showing how good people can be put in complex and thorny situations where they have to make difficult moral choices - where no matter what they do, they do not come out with clean hands.

I did have some problems with this book, and one is that I thought that it bogged down in places. I was surprised to see this novel described as a page-turner, because it sure wasn't that for me, although the author's previous books were. (This novel does differ from her previous books in that it is more traditional in format, and the story telling is straightforward and linear.)

I also had problems with the characters. I found Jacob to be too self-depreciating and full of low self-esteem and self-doubt, to the point that I had trouble understanding why one of the other important characters, Jeannie, fell in love with him. I started feeling about him the way he felt about himself, which wasn't good. I had trouble sympathizing (or empathizing) with him, and he never came alive as a character for me - he never seemed real, and he seemed to deal with his situations and moral dilemmas by either denigrating himself, or hand-wringing.

I also had trouble understanding what motivated Jeannie, and why she made the choices that she made. Like Jacob, I could never get a handle on her.

Lastly, I thought that the author was rather heavy-handed and obvious in trying to get her points made, such as the fact that race doesn't matter, and that we are all the same under our skin:

"soldiers and slaves, and girls, black and white, little boys and old women, many of them drunk. all of them raving - were walking around dazed, their clothing and faces and hands and hair painted with a layer of gray soot. The effect was to erase the races, making the white people look like Negroes and the Negroes look like whites."

Although I am disappointed in this book, I do highly recommend Dara Horn's first brilliant novel, In the Image. You can't go wrong with that one.