HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY: WRITERS PAM JENOFF JESSICA SHATTUCK

As we commemorate HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY this week on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show we visit with two authors best known for their Holocaust historical fiction, New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff and New York Times Notable Author and PEN finalist Jessica Shattuck.

For Pam Jenoff it all began with the astonishing success of her THE KOMMANDANT’S GIRL the World War II heartrending, Quill-nominated International Bestseller. Many successful books later she comes to us with her new title, THE ORPHAN’S TALE, already on the New York Times Bestseller List. THE ORPHAN’S TALE is set amid the unconventional world of a traveling circus, the novel bringing together two women—both refugees from their own pasts and each attempting to live under the radar during the Nazi incursion. Drawing on a little a little-known, real-life Nazi-run program, the Lebensborn Program, in which Jewish babies were ripped from their families and sent by train to concentration camps and the circuses of the era that sheltered Jews during the War, THE ORPHAN’S TALE exposes the light in the shadows of World War II.

Author Jessica Shattuck’s grandparents were Nazi’s. She admitted the truth in a recent New York Times op ed. “My grandparents were Nazis,” Shattuck wrote. “It took me until recently to be able to say — or write — this.” It was when Shattuck came upon a picture of her grandfather in his Nazi uniform that Shattuck could no longer deny the truth, even though she had had and loved her grandmother who Shattuck says did not seem temperamentally suited to hate. Understanding why and how this woman Shattuck knew and loved was swept up in a movement that became synonymous with evil led to Shattuck’s writing her gripping new novel THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE (currently on the New York Times Bestseller List). Turbulent, disturbing, fraught, haunting, THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE provides rarely seen insight into the lives of ordinary Germans during the Nazi era, providing a perspective rarely examined in the voluminous literature of the Second World War.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, Nazi, Germany, World War II, historical fiction, Jewish literature two interesting conversations with bestselling authors Pam Jenoff and Jessica Shattuck on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Wednesday, April 19, the podcast posted 3 pm ET. For more information visit Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.