Product Description

Berlin, 1865. Eva Frank, the daughter of a benevolent Jewish banker, and her sister, Henriette, are having their portrait painted–which leads to a secret affair between young Eva and the mercurial artist. This indiscretion has far-reaching consequences, more devastating than Eva or her family could have imagined. Distraught and desperate to escape her painful situation, Eva hastily marries Abraham Shein, an ambitious merchant who has returned home to Germany for the first time in a decade since establishing himself in the American West. The eighteen-year-old bride leaves Berlin and its ghosts for an unfamiliar life halfway across the world, traversing the icy waters of the Atlantic and the rugged, sweeping terrain of the Santa Fe Trail.

Though Eva’s existence in the rough and burgeoning community of Sante Fe, New Mexico, is a far cry from her life as a daughter of privilege, she soon begins to settle into the mystifying town, determined to create a home. But this new setting cannot keep at bay the overwhelming memories of her former life, nor can it protect her from an increasing threat to her own safety that will force Eva to make a fateful decision.

Joanna Hershon’s novel is a gripping and gritty portrayal of urban European immigrants struggling with New World frontier life in the mid-nineteenth century. Vivid and emotionally compelling, The German Bride is also a beautiful narrative on how far one must travel to make peace with the past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #487087 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Released on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hershon's third novel (Swimming; The Outside of August) is a stylish account of a German Jewish young woman's often brutal odyssey to the post–Civil War American Southwest. After a family tragedy in Berlin, Eva Frank flees in shame and guilt to Santa Fe with her new husband, Abraham Shein. Abraham and his older brother, Meyer, are successful dry goods merchants, and once Eva and Abraham arrive in Santa Fe, Eva's narrative becomes a fish-out-of-water story as the promises Abraham made to her fail to materialize. Abraham, an abusive philanderer with a gambling addiction, wants a child, and Eva wants Abraham to build them a proper house. Eva—hoarding her dowry—begins scheming ways to abandon Santa Fe and establish a better life in San Francisco, but fleeing from unstable Abraham is a dangerous proposition. Though sometimes stilted, the novel, with its colorful cast, setting and redemptive conclusion, eventually wins the reader over. (Mar.)
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Review
Advance praise for The German Bride

“Joanna Hershon's sinuous new novel roams away from the milieu of her two previous books, which were modern family dramas, into the territories of historical fiction and immigration literature. Hershon spins the tale of a German Jewish woman named Eva Frank who, after a hasty marriage in 1865, leaves her wealthy father's mansion in Berlin to pursue a new life among the "low mud-cake hovels" of the American West. To the many expressions of this threshold experience in American immigration literature, by authors from Anzia Yezerskia to Jhumpa Lahiri, Hershon adds an eloquent voice.” -Washington Post

"At once lyrical and heartbreaking, Hershon’s third novel (Swimming, 2001, etc.) follows a young Jewish bride as she leaves the refinement of Berlin for the wilds of 1860s Santa Fe....Hershon creates a finely nuanced portrait of their marriage—Eva, politely contemptuous of the state in which she’s forced to live, Abraham, glib, guilty and self-righteous, and yet the two love, or at least desperately need the other. As Eva suffers a number of failed pregnancies, Abraham becomes more indebted to the gambling table and local bordello, and their downfall is imminent. Hershon’s large cast of supporting players—Santa Fe’s French bishop and his grimacing flock of nuns, the other German Jewish merchants prospering and creating a community—and her graceful description of the desert form a narrative of outsiders pitted against a giant landscape. Amidst it all stands little Eva, determined to make a life for herself. A beautifully written tale of small sufferings and redemptions." - Kirkus Reviews

“A surprising novel of grace and refinement. It is a tale of the American West, but unlike any I have ever read before. Hershon enters Willa Cather territory and does it with a rare elegance and complete originality. I was not fami...

Review
Advance praise for The German Bride

“Joanna Hershon's sinuous new novel roams away from the milieu of her two previous books, which were modern family dramas, into the territories of historical fiction and immigration literature. Hershon spins the tale of a German Jewish woman named Eva Frank who, after a hasty marriage in 1865, leaves her wealthy father's mansion in Berlin to pursue a new life among the "low mud-cake hovels" of the American West. To the many expressions of this threshold experience in American immigration literature, by authors from Anzia Yezerskia to Jhumpa Lahiri, Hershon adds an eloquent voice.” -Washington Post

"At once lyrical and heartbreaking, Hershon’s third novel (Swimming, 2001, etc.) follows a young Jewish bride as she leaves the refinement of Berlin for the wilds of 1860s Santa Fe....Hershon creates a finely nuanced portrait of their marriage—Eva, politely contemptuous of the state in which she’s forced to live, Abraham, glib, guilty and self-righteous, and yet the two love, or at least desperately need the other. As Eva suffers a number of failed pregnancies, Abraham becomes more indebted to the gambling table and local bordello, and their downfall is imminent. Hershon’s large cast of supporting players—Santa Fe’s French bishop and his grimacing flock of nuns, the other German Jewish merchants prospering and creating a community—and her graceful description of the desert form a narrative of outsiders pitted against a giant landscape. Amidst it all stands little Eva, determined to make a life for herself. A beautifully written tale of small sufferings and redemptions." - Kirkus Reviews

“A surprising novel of grace and refinement. It is a tale of the American West, but unlike any I have ever read before. Hershon enters Willa Cather territory and does it with a rare elegance and complete originality. I was not familiar with Joanna Hershon’s work when I read this novel, and it made me order her first two books.”
——Pat Conroy, author of The Water Is Wide

“Wonderful from start to finish. An immigrant tale and a Western, without the Lower East Side or cowboys. I don’t know why nobody has told such a story before, but I’m glad Joanna Hershon has told it first and told it so well.”
——Mary Doria Russell, author of A Thread of Grace

“A novel of great breadth and depth, a richly imagined pilgrimage into this brave new world. Joanna Hershon paints the portrait of a woman——and her family and suitors, the strange company she starts to keep——with authoritative precision; hers is a first-rate talent and here is a riveting read.”
——Nicholas Delbanco, author of Spring and Fall

“Joanna Hershon’s lush and gripping novel of travel and dislocation exquisitely delineates the shock and loss that accompanied the wild ride of immigration and frontier-living in the mid-nineteenth century. Eva Shein’s heart-in-the-throat journey, from Germany to Santa Fe, is an elegant and mesmerizing testament to human adaptability and survival.”
——Helen Schulman, author of A Day at the Beach

“A highly satisfying story, full of marvelous details that evoke a time when the American West was being built. There is stunning power in Hershon’s finely cadenced prose, and compassion for her characters. This is a novel you can’t put down. Get ready to stay up all night following Eva’s adventures.”
——Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife

Customer Reviews

Lyrical, engrossing and entirely original...
In The German Bride, Joanna Hershon proves once more that she's one of the most unique and compelling voices in literature today--as well as one of the most daring. Her third and most accomplished novel not only explores surprising territory--the lives of German-Jewish merchants in post Civil War Santa Fe--but does it with trademark Hershon grace, elegance, and the perfect touch of spine-tingling surrealism. I found Eva Frank's unlikely journey in turns touching, illuminating, humorous and--in the end--all but impossible to put down, and the colorful (and well-researched) cast of characters that surround her--heavy-stakes gamblers, stiff-lipped French nuns, sharpshooting brothel madams, and of course the fellow Jews with whom Eva shares her Passover meals) make every chapter a discovery. I can't recommend this book highly enough!

Outstanding novel
As a resident of Santa Fe, I was eager to read this novel. I have taken a course in Jewish Santa Fe and the merchant families who had settled here in the mid-1800's, and had grown along with the community. These merchants had prospered by trading with the native peoples AND by securing Army contracts. Many of the men in these merchant families had gone back to Germany for brides and had brought them to this new, wild land. As the century turned from 19th to 20th, many of these families moved Back East to a more cultured life than the wild west of Santa Fe could offer.

I expected Hershon to write the "conventional" story, that of young German bride, brought to Santa Fe and prospering along with her husband.
Instead, she writes of a misalliance, a marriage between a young woman and a profligate man, who gambled, drank, and caroused both his own money and that of his brother, with whom he worked.

This is quite a story she writes; earning easily the five stars it's been awarded so far by all the reviewers.

I loved this book
I loved this book! Joanna Hersshon does a marvelous job of describing the Western landscape as well as the Jewish experience in America during the 1860s. It's amazing that no one has covered the subject before a novel. Her descriptions of the Southwest are amazing as well as her character development. I highly recommend "The German Bride"