BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING LIST

 Highly recommended by Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist

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Author Tina Ruiz, who writes under the penname of Tina Griffith, releases her latest book, a novel of historical fiction titled 

A FRAME OF TIME:

 

A reviewer says that it “would make an incredible Christmas gift for any reader! This book is beautiful and a well written story containing both nonfictional and fictional details about one of our most beloved President's in American history, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

 

“On November 22, 1963, Libby Gallant was in downtown Dallas, hoping to catch a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy. But instead of jumping for joy, she trembled with fear while she watched him die.

 

“Hours later, after several versions of the horrifying murder played out on TV, she realized that she had recorded more footage than anyone else. And as she fought her way through an immense panic attack, she decided to hide her home movie from the authorities.

 

“But what if, many years later, someone finds the hidden film? And what if the contents are so damaging that the government needs to destroy it or history would have to be rewritten?”

Buy Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Frame-Time-Tina.../dp/B09RN29HLW

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Acclaimed BRIDGE OF SIGHS AND DREAMS, by author Pamela Allegretto, is a World War II drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat:

Nazi-occupied Rome sets the stage for Bridge of Sighs and Dreams, where the lives of two women collide in an arena of deception, greed, and sacrifice.

Following an allied attack, Angelina Rosini flees to Rome from her bombed-out village and a ruthless Nazi officer bent on revenge. In Rome, the spirited portrait artist channels her creativity into the art of survival for herself and her young daughter. Unwilling to merely endure, and armed with ingenuity, wit, and unyielding optimism, she enters the shadow world of the Resistance where she zigzags through a labyrinth of compassionate allies and cunning spies.

Meanwhile, Lidia Corsini, Angelina's sister-in-law, quenches her lust for power and wealth by turning in Jews to the ruthless Nazi Police attaché with whom she has formed an alliance. Her spiral into immorality accelerates as swiftly as the Jewish population dwindles, and soon neither her husband nor her son is immune to her madness.

Once Angelina discovers the consequences of Lidia’s greed, she conspires to put an end to the treacheries; but in doing so, she becomes the target of Lidia’s most sinister plot.

Bridge of Sighs and Dreams is a story of betrayal, dignity, and purpose that highlights the brutality toward Italian citizens, under both Mussolini’s Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation, and illustrates the tenacity of the human spirit.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS AND DREAMS is available in ebook and paperback versions at all online bookstores worldwide at:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015JRFQE8

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Author Sharon Ledwith’s Young Adult Novels are masterful blends of time-travel and historical fiction:

Nostalgic thrill-rides arrive just in time for the holidays! In Sharon Ledwith’s THE LAST TIMEKEEPERS series, middle grade and young adult characters travel back in time to momentous events to try to right the wrongs of history, Check them out at https://www.amazon.ca/Last-Timekeepers-Noble-Slave-ebook/dp/B09CZ1CQNX/

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For a bit of lighter fare, check out author Catherine Castle’s

A GROOM FOR MAMA, which is a comedy with a touch of drama:

Beverly Walters is dying, and before she goes, she has one wish—to find a groom for her daughter. To get the deed done, Mama enlists the dating service of Jack Somerset, Allison’s former boyfriend.

The last thing corporate-climbing Allison wants is a husband. Furious with Mama’s meddling, and a bit more interested in Jack than she wants to admit, Allison agrees to the scheme as long as Mama promises to search for a cure for her terminal illness.

A cross-country trip from Nevada to Ohio ensues, with a string of disastrous dates along the way, as the trio hunts for treatment and A Groom for Mama.

Available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble

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BOBBY KENNEDY’S “AWFUL GRACE OF GOD”

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Thursday, June 6, 1968, 52 years ago today, I was the perpetually exhausted but deliriously content young mother of my eighth-month-old baby girl and my twenty-seven-month-old little boy. As on every day, that day began at the peak of dawn for me, and even before my first cup of coffee, baby girl needed her diaper changed and little boy a mommy’s handhold while he squirmed on that strange device in the bathroom called “Potty.” All the while, in the kitchen, our new Instamatic Electric Coffee Pot huffed and puffed like an agitated volcano and was piping hot and ready to pour by the time hubby ambled in, his eyes sticky with sleep and tongue thick with terrible news. “Someone shot Bobby Kennedy last night,” hubby said over his shoulder as he walked to the television set in the adjoining living room and clicked it on. My musician husband was driving back to our Long Island home from his gig in a Manhattan nightclub when he heard the news on his car radio—sometime in the wee dark hours of that morning. It was gruesome déjàvu: a fatal bullet to the brain to a second Kennedy in what seemed like the blink of an eye in our young lives.    

Hubby and I were married a scant eight months when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Less than half a decade later, we Americans were still coming to grips with the enormous loss of President Kennedy, and our hopes were pinned on his younger brother Bobby, a candidate for the Democratic nomination of the upcoming presidential election, to resurrect in the White House the Camelot magic of John and Jackie and their adorable Caroline and John-John. Admittedly, there was a fairytale element to our expectations of Bobby that in some ways flew in the face of the sad turmoil that marked the decade, and too much of which persists to this day—crises such as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, civil rights, women’s rights, social unrest, to name just the major few.

What was it about Bobby that instilled such hope for the nation in so many people like me despite the enormous odds stacked against him—that Kennedy son who in the words of his own father was the “runt” of the litter and least likely to bring glory to his powerful political family? That “runt,” like so many others of his kind, whose physical frame barely hefted the weight of his enormously courageous heart, governed by a crafty brain, exhibited real promise of being the best of the brood in the end. Bobby’s track record housed in his gentle and in some ways flawed presence convinced us that he was our David who would slay Goliath—a totally unrealistic probability, most likely, but I believe, as do almost countless others, that Bobby would have wounded Goliath to a degree enough to slow him down—considerably enough that the evil giant just might have expired eventually. I think that Bobby had the power to change hearts and minds and policies, changes that could have nudged the giant toward imminent expiration.    

Bobby loved justice. While he considered civil rights as his greatest cause toward justice, and worked through and around the tangled web of the political system to confront it and right it, his wasn’t always a mature eye on the ways and means of achieving the goal. But he tried. And he never gave up on it or any of his aspirations toward justice. His was an ideological development on full view to those who paid attention—from a young lawyer in the Justice Department fighting the Mafia, organized union miscreants, corrupt politicians, and Soviet agents, to an advocate for civil rights, gun-control, nuclear-weapons control, and voting rights. He also supported ending the Vietnam War with visionary efforts toward an “honorable peace.”

One of his most impressive civil rights actions was in September, 1962, when as Attorney General under President John F. Kennedy, Bobby sent a force of U.S. Marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents, as well as federal prison guards to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a federal court order that allowed the admittance of James Meredith, the first African-American student, to the University of Mississippi. Whites rioted—rebellions fraught with death and injury, a situation that required further federal troops. Through the whole of it, Bobby remained adamant that black students had the right to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system. He didn’t send in federal troops to ruthlessly beat back peaceful protestors to make way for his president to walk across the street and stand in front of a church and brandish a Bible upsidedown for a political photo op. NO! AG BILL BARR! YOU AIN’T NO BOBBY KENNEDY!

Bobby was three months shy of his nineteenth birthday when his eldest brother Joe Jr., was killed in action in World War II. His brother John’s assassination, as well as his brother Ted’s auto accident and serious injury sent Bobby into a period of depression and serious reflection. He came close to losing faith in politics as the avenue of reform and growth for the country. He rallied however, and pressed on, credited to his deep Catholic faith.  

In an interview for “Look” magazine following his trip to Apartheid-era South Africa in mid-1966, Bobby related a story about his confrontation with whites about their policy of disallowing blacks to pray with whites in their houses of worship. The rationalization by the whites was that it was a moral necessity based on Biblical scriptures. Bobby replied, “’What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?’ There was no answer. Only silence,” Bobby said to the reporter.

As a senator, Bobby worked to improve the plight of African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and other marginalized groups whom he called the “disaffected,” the impoverished,” and the “excluded.” He aligned himself with civil rights struggles and campaigners, and led the Democratic Party coalition to eliminate perceived discrimination on all levels, including in the areas of equal access to housing, education, employment, and health coverage.  

Two months before his own assassination, Bobby was campaigning in Indianapolis when he received word of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. In a speech to the gathered

crowd about MLK, Bobby slightly misquoted Aeschylus with the following lines:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”  

Bobby didn’t know he was speaking his own epitaph.©

THE GHOST OF JOHN F. KENNEDY COMFORTS A GERMAN EX-PAT

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Emil’s voice cuts through the layers of my slumber like a buzz saw. It isn’t so much grating as it is insistent—overpowering! “Admiral Dönitz has called off the U-boat operations, Katrina. And the Führer isn’t fighting him on it. I will no longer be assigned to long days and nights away from you out to sea. We can be married now.” It is the same dream—too many nights the same dream! It punches me in the stomach! I jerk awake, gasping for air. “The middle of the night again,” I moan. “Emil, please let me be! Please, please go away!” But, it is useless. Nothing has changed in all these twenty years. I know from experience that I won’t be able to get back to sleep. Frustrated, I kick the quilt to the foot of the mattress and rise to my feet. “Coffee!” my weary brain insists. I paddle to the kitchen.

            It has been a long weekend in Washington DC, perhaps the longest in its history—in the history of my adopted country as a whole, actually. This capital city of the United States is closed. Across the country, businesses and schools are closed; nearly everything is closed, except for high-alert security operations and transportation systems. The grief-stricken people of the nation are parked in front of their television sets to watch the unfolding events surrounding the assassination of President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It happened shortly after noon central time on Friday, November 22, 1963—only the day before yesterday! It seems like forever. A jolt to my consciousness in an unwelcome voice reminds me that the president is now Lyndon Baines Johnson. I don’t like the idea one tiny bit.

I am one of a large community of ex-pat Germans in DC. Following the death of both of my parents, and as I had no other ties to Germany, I immigrated to the USA. That was fourteen years ago. I was fortunate to land a position right away with a German Language Institute and Cultural Center here. Mr. Kennedy, at the time Senator Kennedy, engaged the institute in helping him with his campaign for president, specifically in appearing at gatherings of ex-pat Germans. I served as the adjunct to him in that endeavor. I was taken aback when first he engaged me in conversation about the Second World War. It is usually a topic that is avoided in interchanges between Germans and Americans. I understood immediately that he wanted all barriers between himself and me erased, a desire on his part I was to see over time extended to all people everywhere.

The date of our first meeting, a lunch meeting, was Friday, January 15, 1960, only two weeks after he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I remember it so well because it coincided with a fateful date earlier in my life. It was on that exact date in 1944 that my then fiancé, Emil came up missing. He was a crew member of the German U-boat 377 whose last radio report occurred on January 15, 1944. The submarine had departed Brest, France on December 15, 1943. U-boat 377, with Emil onboard, sailed into the mid-Atlantic, its return anticipated in early February. When it failed to arrive, it was reported, ‘lost to an unknown cause.’ Before the submarine set out on its mission, Emil had informed me while on a short leave over the Christmas holiday of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s discontinuation of Germany’s U-boat program in the Western Atlantic because of a lack of success and heavy losses. Apparently, however, Germany was not so willing to give up its U-boat program. It actually continued well into the final weeks of the war.

In my nervousness, and by way of an apology, I suppose, I blurted out this history to the senator. His handsome face broke into a reassuring smile, and he said, “My service in the war was also spent on the water, although on the Pacific fighting the Japanese.”  

“The famous PT 109 incident,” I replied.

“Yes. That happened in August of 1943.”

“I knew next to nothing of Hitler and his Nazis, or of the war,” I replied shamefacedly.

“You weren’t a member of a Hitler Youth group?”

“My father was a farmer. We lived in an extremely remote region of Southwest Germany. We lived our lives much as our ancestors had done for generations, isolated from the country’s political turmoil. We were aware of the war, but were able to keep apart from it almost entirely. And then I met Emil.”

“And he was in it body and soul?!”

“He was a Nazi, a fanatical Nazi. For a long time, I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.”

“And by the time you did recognize it, it was too late—you were in love with him, I take it.”

I broke eye contact with the senator then and looked at my folded hands in my lap. “Emil took it upon himself to indoctrinate me. It was a point of honor with him. He saw the war from the perspective of a sailor and he spared me no details about his ‘kills,’ as he called them—hundreds, thousands of American merchant ships and Allied submarines blown to bit. I didn’t keep a tally because the horror of the slaughter of all those young men on both sides was sickening to me. After a while, I couldn’t stand the sight of Emil. I vowed that if I survived the war, I would leave Germany.”

“Have you ever gone back?”

“Someday, when both Germany and I have mended a bit more.
“And Emil?”

“He haunts me still. Not a day goes by that I don’t carry the burden of my convoluted feelings for him. The weight is heavier because he lost his life.”

“I lost my big brother, Joe in the war. By rights, it should be he who is running for president. I suppose in some ways I’m doing it for him, although at times he was a royal pain in the neck to me.” The senator chuckled and then was silent for a couple of minutes, lost in his memories of his brother. “We must never forget that we are still in a state of war. We are in the Cold War, and have been since the end of World War II. In a way, it is just as insidious, maybe more so, because our enemies are so much more difficult to see. I think of it as our long twilight struggle. When I am president I intend to lead the way into the light.”

It was all I could do to keep tears from pooling in my eyes. Finally he said, “We both have our war scars. What do you say we leave it at that? Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight.” He raised his glass and reached it out to me. I clinked my glass against his, and he added, “And now for the business of getting me elected president. What do you have planned for me?”

I have lost this morning to my memories. I think about going to Mass, but my watch tells me it is already too late in the morning to do so. I click on the TV. The president’s motorcade scrolls across the screen as it has done for the umpteenth time during the weekend, since that awful Friday, November 22^nd morning. That gorgeous head of the president, so vulnerable in the open-top limousine, slumps forward. His wife in her Chanel suit and pillbox hat draws him to her. The president is shot, and we learned soon thereafter, that he is dead!

The live television cameras switch to the latest events in the continuing coverage of the president’s assassination. Cameras are in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters this Sunday morning. Before our eyes, among a crowd of reporters and other onlookers, in handcuffs, young Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s alleged assassin, is surrounded by police guards. A big man in a fedora and dark suit steps forward from the crowd, raises a handgun, and shoots Oswald. Pandemonium breaks out and then the shooter is wrestled to the floor. Unconscious, Oswald is hustled to an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same medical facility in which the president was pronounced dead two days ago.

Wave after wave of shock, grief, outrage, doom sweep over me! Hadn’t I left this kind of thing behind in Germany so long ago? What terrifying impacts will the loss of this president in whom the American people placed such high hopes have on the country? I am heartbroken for his wife and their little children. Was there a photograph of Jackie, Caroline, and little John-John in his wallet when he fell? I think about his mother and father and his many brothers and sisters, and his extended family, resilient and unstoppable people almost to a one, but this will give them serious pause, undoubtedly.

I perch in rigid disbelief on the edge of my sofa. “…Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight,” JFK said to me at our first meeting, one short sentence that took me in the fold and defined so simply my role as an American, and as a German, when I return to my homeland, someday.©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction inspired by true events

Image: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Books by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com.