Q&A with Jeneva Rose

 

 

 

Jeneva Rose is the author of the new novel One of Us Is Dead. Her other books include The Perfect Marriage. She lives in Chicago.

 

Q: What inspired you to write One of Us Is Dead, and how did you create your cast of characters?

 

A: One of Us Is Dead centers around an upscale and exclusive salon in Buckhead and the wealthy clients that frequent it. When one wife is replaced with a younger woman, power shifts between the group and each interaction becomes more explosive. Dark secrets are revealed as the women vie to remain relevant.

 

Caught in the middle of it all is salon owner Jenny, who spends her days taking care of her clients and trying to keep the peace between them. When one of them ends up dead, it’s only Jenny and her collection of town gossip that can help the detective solve the murder.

 

I was inspired to write One of Us Is Dead while sitting in a salon chair back in my home state of Wisconsin. My hairstylist and I were talking, and she brought up something that I had told her at a previous appointment. I was shocked and said, “Wait, I told you that?” She nodded. I replied, “I can’t believe I told you that.”

 

Her next words were a lightbulb moment for me. “You wouldn’t believe the things people tell me while sitting in this chair,” she said.

 

I had been toying around with other book ideas after having written The Perfect Marriage, but this one immediately felt special. I thought a salon was the perfect setting for a thriller, and I knew I had to write it. By the time I got home, I had half of the book plotted in my head, and I hit the ground running.

 

Creating the cast of characters was tricky, and it took a lot of finessing to ensure they each brought a different perspective to the story. Since there are five points of view, and the timeline switches between past and present, it was so important that each character was unique and had their own voice and quirks to ensure readers could easily tell them apart.  

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I always know my endings before I start writing, but that wasn’t the case for this book. I had one in mind but after I wrote it, I found it wasn’t satisfying, so I ended up rewriting it several times with different outcomes as to who was dead and who was the murderer.

 

I remember spending days covering my kitchen cupboards with post-it notes that outlined the entire story. I kept rearranging and adding and removing them all in an attempt to figure out the “perfect” ending.

 

Q: What do you think the novel says about wealth?

 

A: I think the novel says a couple of things about wealth. Money doesn’t solve all your problems, but it can help—as with wealth comes privilege.  

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: I write commercial fiction that is meant to entertain. I’ve received hundreds of messages from readers thanking me for writing The Perfect Marriage, because it was a book that they got lost in and made them forget about the things going on in the world around them. I hope One of Us Is Dead provides that level of entertainment and total escape as well.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Recently, I turned in my next thriller to my publisher, titled You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, which centers around an Airbnb and a fast romance that’ll surely have an outcome worse than heartbreak. It’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you open up your heart and your home to a total stranger.

 

I’m also nearly finished drafting a thriller novella titled The House Across the Street, about two families that come together for a dinner party, but each one is harboring a deadly secret that’ll surely be revealed before dessert is even served.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: An in-person book tour is in the works for One of Us Is Dead, so readers can get updates on that and any other upcoming in-person or virtual events by visiting my website jenevarose.com or connecting with me on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, or Twitter.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 28

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 28, 1926: Harper Lee born.

Q&A with Zain E. Asher

 

 

 

Zain E. Asher is the author of the new family memoir Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable. She is an anchor for CNN International, and she's based in New York.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of your book calls it “a wholly inspiring portrait of an extraordinary immigrant family.” What do you think of that description, and why did you decide to write this memoir focusing on your family, particularly your mother?

 

A: I decided to write the proposal shortly after my first son was born. I always had deep respect and appreciation for my mother, but it was only when I became a mother myself that I began to understand the magnitude of what she did.

 

She was pregnant with three children when my dad died. We lived in a South London neighborhood where poverty, crime, and violence were prevalent. She was robbed multiple times at the small pharmacy where she worked. And her closest family and friends were 4,000 miles away.

 

Despite all that, she somehow made us become our best selves. We had so many legitimate reasons to give up, but because of her, my siblings and I have surpassed every possible expectation for a family in our circumstances. 

 

I am an anchor at CNN, my brother is an Oscar-nominated actor, my sister is a doctor, and my older brother is a successful entrepreneur. 

 

My mother refused to let tragedy define us. She plastered newspaper clippings of Black success stories over our walls to show us what we could achieve.

 

When my brother decided to pursue acting, she taught herself Shakespeare to push him to be better -- even though she had barely graduated from high school.

 

She also held late-night study sessions almost every night to teach me subjects months before they were presented in class. And she devoted every spare cent to our education, even if it meant we didn't have heat in the house. 

 

Our lives today are a direct result of our mother’s relentless sacrifice. I hope that the totality of our story -- and my mother's truly incredible journey -- will help inspire others going through difficult times. Our story is proof that our struggles can bring out the best in us.

 

Q: Can you say more about your relationship with your mother, and the impact she’s had on the lives of you and your siblings?

 

A: It's impossible to understate the impact my mother has had on our lives. Everything we have achieved is directly because of her. You'd never know it looking at her now -- she might seem unassuming or even shy from the outside -- but she is a true force of nature. 

 

I just think about how she didn't give up that Sunday in September 1988 when she got the phone call: Your husband and your son have been involved in a car crash. One of them is dead and we don’t know which one. 

 

She soon learned that her son was badly injured and her husband, the only man she had ever kissed, was gone forever. The grief nearly swept her away, but she fought through it -- and did so much more. 

 

As a single mother working six days a week, there were no wasted moments together when I was young. She spent every minute she could working to ensure my siblings and I were not defined by the tragedy we shared. That meant tough love, discipline, and a serious emphasis on academics. 

There will always be an emphasis on achievement and discipline in our family, but things are a lot more relaxed today. I talk to my mom almost every day. We laugh together. We cry together. We talk about our futures, the things we still want to do.

 

She's also obsessed with her grandchildren. In fact, she spent three months living with me and my husband after each of our sons was born. There is no limit to the sacrifices she is still willing to make for her family. With her, it has always been that way. She's a brilliant example. 

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so did you learn anything especially surprising?  

 

A: I was only 5 years old when my father died, so I had to do a lot of research to tell this story well.

 

I interviewed dozens of people who knew my family over the years. I tracked down my dad's high school friends, classmates he met while studying in Mexico, extended relatives and family friends. I also spoke to people who were in the hospital the day he died.

 

For the chapter on Biafra, I spoke to several Nigerian professors and read everything I could find about the country's bloody civil war that erupted just after my teenage parents met.

 

For other chapters, I also interviewed each of my siblings several times to mine every detail I could about their experiences. And I can't even count the number of times I interviewed my mom. She actually set time limits on our discussions because they were sometimes so painful for her.

 

I got to know my family at a much deeper level through this process, to understand the depth of their struggles, their ambitions and how they see the world.

 

This is especially true of my dad. I was so young when he left us that I can barely remember him. But everyone I spoke to had such beautiful stories about how he had affected their lives, the things he said, the way a room felt so empty when he left because he was so full of life. It was such a gift to get to know him better. 

 

I know this book will help inspire others, but honestly, it has already done so much for me. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: On one level, I want people to recognize my mom for the quiet hero she is. At its core, this book is a love letter to her.

 

But more than that, I want to give people a glimpse into the often-overlooked world of Nigerian culture and parenting, which by most objective measures is a smashing success.

 

Our country certainly has flaws, but as I write in the book, Nigerian immigrants have sent armies of successful children to every corner of the world. We represent the most educated immigrant group in the United States, a disproportionate percentage of Black students at Harvard, and we are emerging as superstars in sports and culture.

 

I want to reintroduce Nigerians to the world, and I also want to share the village ways that underlie our success.

 

Maybe most of all, I want people to find hope in my pages. I have come to believe that I am my best self today because of my struggles, my failures and my pain -- not in spite of them. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Well, my day job keeps me extremely busy. I host One World with Zain Asher five days a week on CNN International. I’m extremely proud of the work we do.

 

My show was created specifically to strengthen news coverage out of Africa, which so often is stereotyped or ignored altogether. My show isn't solely focused on the continent, but you'll often see me sitting down with African presidents or business leaders in addition to covering the biggest news in the rest of the world.  

 

I'm also raising two boys under the age of 5, which is a full-time job unto itself. And, finally, I'm also having some early conversations about potential new projects, which might be another book or even a movie. I love my life, but I've never been one to rest on my laurels. There's much more to come. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with John Mauceri

 

 

 

John Mauceri is the author of the new book The War on Music: Reclaiming the Twentieth Century. His other books include For the Love of Music: A Conductor's Guide to the Art of Listening. A conductor and music scholar, he has held many positions in the musical world, including serving as chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and music director of the Washington Opera. He taught for many years at Yale University.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The War on Music?

 

A: Discovering hundreds of composers whose music, composed in the middle of the last century, I had never heard or whose names were never mentioned in decades of concert going and studying music at the highest levels of academia.

 

These composers had been heralded in their earlier years and they had one thing in common: World War II and the racial policies of the Third Reich.

 

Q: You write, “Perhaps music and art have always been, to some extent, pawns of politics: the plaything of kings and popes.” Can you say more about that, and about the impact of the wars of the 20th century on classical music?

 

A: Gregorian Chant, for example, was created by the Vatican to create a single style of Roman Catholic church music to bring to all areas of the world, especially by its missionaries.

 

Composers, like visual artists, always needed financial support, so it makes sense that those with money (kings and popes) wanted to hear what they liked and demanded it of the clients, i.e., the composer. Wagner’s masterpieces were paid for by the king of Bavaria.

 

Once a style of music was part of the branding of a government, as in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, it became a symbol of the state. Thus, Italian composers of the era were meant to (and commissioned to) compose music about Italy and the great and heroic past in a certain style.

 

This worked against these composers after the war when Fascism was repudiated, and all of those operas and orchestral works were banned from being performed.

 

Q: How would you define classical music today, and what do you see looking forward?

 

A: I am not sure the category “classical” is operative today. I prefer “classic,” meaning it will endure. It is not ephemeral. West Side Story is a classic from 1957. The great orchestral compositions from Hollywood, beginning in the 1930s, are classic.

 

Q: How did your own experiences in the world of music affect your writing of this book?

 

A: My experiences are on every page of this book, because only by living and discovering could I understand why so much is missing from the repertory played in our concert halls, and why “classical” seems to have stopped by 1935 and nothing has continued to fill the repertory except a series of world premieres of works that rather quickly disappear.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am writing a cultural history of the second half of the 20th century from the point of view of my life as an observer and fan followed by my life as a participant with its greatest creators.

 

Its three sections—Broadway, Opera, and Hollywood—are three components of how music continued to tell our stories through three different delivery systems but are essentially the living continuity of how we humans have always told our stories: through words and music.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: My book will be seen by some as quite radical, but unlike the iconoclasts who built and continue to support a definition of music as an endless series of complexities and provocations, my book is a call for reparation and reconciliation.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Michael Benson

 

 

 

Michael Benson is the author of the new book Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America. His many other books include Betrayal in Blood. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Gangsters vs. Nazis?

 

A: The instant that I heard that there had been an organized effort in the US during the Depression to disrupt and deter gatherings of German-Americans celebrating Hitler’s philosophies, I knew it was a compelling story that needed to be told, especially in this day and age when perhaps people have forgotten the horrors of fascism.

 

The fact that many of the combatants were gangsters was just a bonus!

 

I had known parts of the story, from my reading of the 26 volumes of Warren Commission testimony, biographies of various mobsters of the era, word of mouth, but I didn’t realize how organized the anti-Nazi movement was in 1938 America among Jewish gangsters (and many of their boxing friends) until my agent Doug Grad alerted me to an article by Robert Rockaway in Tablet magazine which introduced me to Judge Nathan Perlman, the true hero of my book.

 

He had the idea to put together an army of Jewish gangsters to battle the American Nazis: Jewish because they understood the horrors that were going on in Europe, and gangsters because they needed to break the law to get the job done.

 

Q: What role do you see these Jewish gangsters playing in the fight against Nazism in the United States during World War II?

 

A: They were our first line of defense against the Nazis, American heroes. I like to compare them to comic book superheroes.

 

The 1940 cover of Captain America Comics #1 was Cap’s introduction to the youth of America. It showed him bursting into Adolf Hitler’s inner sanctum, coolly deflecting Nazi bullets from several guards with his star-spangled shield, and planting a devastating right cross onto Hitler’s jaw.

 

The meaning was clear. The evil Nazis needed gats, and even armed they were no matches for a knuckle sandwich dished out by a red-blooded American boy.

 

And that was the Jewish gangsters, who from coast to coast busted up German-American Bund meetings with their rabblerousing rhetoric of hate. And the gangsters did it without firing a single shot, indeed without a single fatality. They saw injustice and they socked it on the jaw.

 

When the war began everyone’s roles changed. The German-American leaders were no longer protected by freedom of speech and were committing sedition. Their followers, many of them, were drafted and sent to fight in the Pacific. The Jewish gangsters were also drafted and fought in Europe.

 

Nat Arno, one of our heroes, hit the beaches at Normandy on D-Day and marched the hard way to Berlin. He claimed that on a couple of occasions he ran into German POWs marching the other way that he recognized from street fights in Newark, New Jersey!

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: The thing that upset me the most were the Nazi Summer Camps for kids. There were German-American Bund youth camps springing up across the country, where youngsters were taught to Seig Heil, love Hitler, and hate the Jews.

 

The camps promised fresh air and swimming and sports and games, and in many cases the children, and their parents who paid for camp, didn’t know that it was a pro-Hitler camp until the kids got there.

 

Go inside the Meeting Hall and there would be a huge swastika mounted on the ceiling. On Sundays there would be huge picnics and German-Americans from around the area would come, drink beer, watch a parade, and then hear speeches about the fatherland and its glorious leader.

 

When possible I interviewed descendants of the participants, but that wasn’t always possible. The story is 80 years old. I got some of it from the Warren Commission (although it would be a spoiler to say why), plus it is discussed in the biographies of Mickey Cohen and Meyer Lansky.

 

The riots themselves were covered by local journalists who often had no idea who those guys were busting up the Bund meetings. Sometimes the gangsters would wear American Legion caps as disguises.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book today, at a time when antisemitism and right-wing extremism is rising?

 

A: I think it’s strong to call my book a Call to Action, but it is a good sample of how hate speech turns into destructive movements, and if we can draw parallels to today’s America, then great.

 

The thing that troubles me most about the Aryan Brotherhood and other neo-Nazi groups today is that they act with impunity. We saw them inside the Capitol building, convinced against all reason that they were the good guys.

 

I’m certainly not advocating violence ever, but it would be nice if some of these haters learned a lesson, that being a Nazi in America can get you slapped around.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am promoting a book of true crime stories called Dark Roses: 13 Horrific True Stories, and I’m writing, with Frank DiMatteo, a biography of Carmine Galante, the Bonanno Family gangster who was for a time the world’s biggest heroin trafficker.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Back in 1938 there was no such thing as hate speech laws. As long as you didn’t say anything obscene or shout Fire! in a crowded room, you could say whatever you wanted to, you could call for “the final solution” regarding the “Jewish problem” and it was perfectly legal. Freedom of speech.

 

Breaking up Nazi rallies with violence, of course, was illegal, so an army was needed that didn’t care that much about the law. It seems hard to imagine now, but in 1938 most Americans were against going to war against Hitler. He had conquered most of Europe and still Mr. and Mrs. America felt they didn’t have a dog in the fight.

 

Jewish Americans saw it differently. They knew that horrible things were happening in Europe, that their relatives were being rounded up and no one was coming back. So Jewish Americans were the first to realize that war against Hitler was necessary and inevitable, and that the war for the hearts and minds of Americans had already begun.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Aimee K. Runyan

 

 

Aimee K. Runyan is the author of the new historical novel The School for German Brides. Her other books include Across the Winding River. She lives in Colorado.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The School for German Brides, and how did you create your characters Hanna, Tilde, and Klara?

 

A: I got the idea to write The School for German Brides while researching for Across the Winding River (my immediately preceding novel). I read about the bride schools when I was looking up information on Nazi wedding traditions and I was properly horrified at the propaganda these schools spewed out.

 

I imagined a young woman (Hanna) being forced to attend one of these terrible schools, the events leading up to her indoctrination, and how she might come out the other side. Hanna was definitely the genesis character.

 

My amazing editor, Tessa, rightly pointed out that we also needed to show the Jewish side of the story in pre-war Berlin, and so Tilde was born. As a Mischling, she was torn between the Jewish and “Aryan” worlds. I loved the complexity of her and how she tried, with every fiber of her being, to protect those around her.

 

Klara was a fun discovery very early on that linked Hanna’s world to Tilde’s. She went from being a very small player in Hanna’s life to possibly the most interesting character of the book. She tried so hard to meet her parents’ expectations, she never stopped to consider her own. 

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: Given that this was a book written during the heart of the lockdown, no travel to Germany was possible, sadly. I did what I could with research books I ordered and what I could find in online archives. Thankfully, much of what I needed to know wasn’t so obscure that I had a hard time finding what I needed.

 

One of my favorite things I learned about was the French bookshop in Berlin run by a Jewish woman, Françoise Frenkel. It was a fascinating look at how quickly Berlin became such a dangerous place and how the Nazis did so much to control the press under their rule.

 

Q: The author Kris Waldherr said of the book that it describes “a world where secret acts of feminine resistance flare beneath the surface, along with heart-tugging compassion and daring bravery.” What do you think of that assessment, and what do you think the book says about resistance by women in Nazi Germany?

A: I think the assessment is a sound one. Women in Germany were oppressed to a staggering degree. My “Aryan” characters certainly aren’t strong resisters in the sense we read about in other books. They are nothing like the French resisters who risked their lives to save their country from the rise of fascism.

 

As Ms. Waldherr wisely points out, these acts of resistance are secret and often small. Hidden acts of compassion and kindness that might mean the difference between life and death for one of their countrymen.

 

To be sure, I think all the Aryan characters in this book are all complicit in the atrocities of the war. Some, more than others, are able to recognize this and do what they can to atone for it.

 

I absolutely didn’t want to craft an Aryan savior narrative, but to show how two teen girls were able to think beyond the roles that were predestined for them and to make a small difference in the world. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: I hope that readers see my assertion that political neutrality and complacency are impossible and just lead to being complicit in oppression.

 

I hope they’re able to appreciate the limited scope of power women had under the Nazi regime and how these bride schools sought to promote that subjugation.

 

The bride school itself may only feature in a few chapters, but Hanna is being groomed to become the perfect German bride from the moment she crosses her aunt’s threshold.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing a triple timeline family saga set in Paris that spans from the Siege of Paris and the Paris Commune from 1870-71, to the postwar era, to the late 1990s.

 

It all centers around a small bakery in the heart of Montmartre and the family who passes it from generation to generation. Think Les Misérables meets Chocolat. It’s (at least tentatively) called A Bakery in Paris and should be out in 2023!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m excited about two other projects I’m working on for 2023 as well: a contemporary women’s fiction project set in Provence and a historical anthology collection with dear friends Rachel McMillan and J’nell Cieselski. So excited to have so many irons in the fire! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 27

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 27, 1759: Mary Wollstonecraft born.