Upcoming Events
October 15, 2022, Southern Festival of Books
The Nashville Public Library Commons Room
4-5 PM
October 27, 2022, Books and Books
Coral Gables, FL.
May 17, 2022, Launch for Mid-Air
The Corner Bookstore
1313 Madison Avenue at 93rd Street
New York, NY 10128
June 29, 2022
Chaucer’s Books
3321 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
6-7 PM
July 21, 2022
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA
October 14-16th, 2022
Fiction Panelist, Southern Festival of Books
Nashville, TN.
October 27, 2022
Books and Books
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Shelter Island Library
New York Society Library, March 15, 2021
Chauncer's Bookstore, May 6, 2021
Wellesley College Reunion Speaker, April 18, 2021
Questions and Answers for book talk with Professor Jerry Cohen, UCSB
What was your motivation in writing this book?
a. I went to look into escapes and heard witness talking. At M. of T. Decided I would go across the street to listen. She wasn’t one of the most intense, more dramatic speakers, but as I approached w the school children to see the numbers on her arm and thank her, I found myself in tears, unable to speak.
b. Realized that I was witnessing something akin to a Greek tragedy cycle. Only with the Cassandras and Odysseuses here and now, telling about a time not long ago and a place that we could actually visit.
c. And when I learned this wasn’t just a one-off, that every day speakers, I found myself going back and then back again, and then somehow, eventually, obliged to bear witness myself. Carry their story on.
How does The Plum Trees differ from your original plan?
a. I had planned to simply investigate the escape from Auschwitz, detailed in my uncle's letter from Germany, August, 1945.
b. But as I began to get the story of the logistics of the Holocaust and realized it was quite different from the one I had grown up with, I found I wanted to start at the beginning. Show how people became entrapped, how we too would have found ourselves on the train to Auschwitz.
Tell us about how you handled writing about such difficult subjects:
a. Once I realized the actual logistics were different from what I’d somehow learned—that this wasn’t anything close to a question of lambs to slaughter, etc.—I felt this was a story that had to be told. It wasn’t easy, and there were times when I thought I’d never have good dreams again. But I was committed by then, and had to push through.
What is the significance of the Plum Trees?
a. A construct to stand against all that the Nazis signified. Beauty, cultivation, love of land. Sense of place.
b. The protagonist's love of his plum trees signifies his sense of home. His hopes that he too, along with his family had taken root here. Dream of belonging.
c. A sense of rootedness even as his own roots were being cut, as all he had cultivated was dug up around him.
Discuss just v. unjust laws:
a. What we learned when protesting the war in Vietnam. It is a subjective judgmen., which is hard to justify philosophically. One that has to be made anew each time one is faced with the question.
b. Hermann’s strict adherence to the laws in the beginning—wearing a yellow star, turning in their bicycles and radios—was his attempt to assert his citizenship, and made sense while he could still believe in that. But once he came to see that he was no longer considered a citizen under the law of the land, then he felt justified in helping his daughters escape from state mandated transport and in securing false papers for himself and his family.