Generations of History – The Night Travelers by Armando Lucas Correa

This novel is about four generations of women and has multiple settings: Nazi Germany, Cuba during both the Batista and Castro regimes, New York, and the reunited Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and into the near present.

Ally is a beautiful young German poet in Berlin who has a relationship with Marcus, a Black German jazz musician, while Hitler and his Fascism is sweeping the country. Marcus eventually disappears and is presumed dead. Ally has given birth to a daughter, Lilith, a brilliant child whom she realizes she must hide away since the child is a Mischling – of two races – and forbidden and hated by the Nazis and their policy of racial purity. The two go out only by night where Lilith's darker skin tone and hair texture are not on display. 

Very painfully, Ally concludes she can only protect Lilith by sending her away, and the child joins the Herzogs, a Jewish couple on the ill-fated SS St. Louis on its way to Cuba, where they are some of the very small number allowed to enter that country, despite its promise to take in the ship's large number of Jewish refugees. The St. Louis will also be rejected by FDR's government, and returns to Germany, where its remaining passengers will be murdered in the concentration camps.

Lilith is raised by the Herzogs and eventually she and her closest friend, Martín, fall in love and marry. Martín is a Cuban air force  pilot and his family is close to the Batista government. The two have a daughter, Nadine, but Martín is killed when Castro takes over. Lilith, through contacts in the Catholic church, follows her mother Ally's path, and arranges for Nadine to be sent to Queens, New York where she is raised by a couple there – the man is a veteran of World War II, and his wife is a German immigrant he met while serving abroad. The wife hides a terrible secret.

Nadine inherits her mother's intelligence and becomes a scientist. She is multi-lingual and moves to Germany, where she marries Anton. They have a daughter, Luna, whose skin color echoes her grandmother's. As an adult, Luna, always a voracious reader and writer, convinces Nadine to explore her family history, something she has long avoided.

This is a complex story – part family saga, part historical epic, part study of the complexity of racial, religious, ethnic, and sexual preferences. It's beautifully written, and examines many difficult, challenging topics many authors, and readers, may choose to avoid, but there is much to learn here. 

I would also encourage readers not to skip the Author's Note following the end, which provides  background on some of the issues raised in the text, the first two paragraphs of the Acknowledgements, and the extensive Bibliography. This author truly did his homework... 

Windows to the Heart – The Glass Chateau by Stephen P. Kiernan

An outstanding work of historical fiction, set in France following the end of World War II, and centering around Asher, a character inspired by the modernist artist Marc Chagall (1887-1885), who worked in many mediums, but whose stained glass windows are some of his most widely-recognized works.

Asher is a French Jew whose wife and toddler daughter were killed in front of him by the Nazis. He joined the Resistance and became an assassin. When the war ends, he finds himself at loose ends, mourning his family, his home, and lost business as a fine craftsman of custom-made boots. He wanders the French countryside, a devastation of destroyed villages, roads, bridges, farms, cathedrals, and buildings of every other variety. Everyone is starving, and what we would today call PTSD affects nearly every person. Crime and violence are widespread as the surviving French people try to recover and rebuild.

Eventually he finds his way to the Château Guerin, a stained glass workshop and manor house, run by Brigitte, whose family has operated the business for generations, and her husband Marc, devout Catholics, along with a crew of workers. Asher is famished, and they feed him, then offer him lodging and work. All of the workers have come to the château in a state of despair from their wartime experiences. As he is surrounded by practicing Catholics, the workshop's commissions are replacements for the destroyed windows of churches and cathedrals, and anti-Semitism is widespread, Asher keeps his religion a secret from the others.

Brigette and Marc's other mission is to create a healing experience for the workers, which they do by providing them with food, security, and work. Over time, Asher finds a sense of purpose in his work, learns glassmaking, and is able to nourish his artistic spirit. He also connects, even as he deeply mourns his wife and daughter, with a local woman who supplies the château and village with fruit and vegetables from her vast garden.

Asher becomes more and more of a contributor to the château's work as time passes. Though he lives under the strain of his secret, and continues to grieve, he is still able to heal and grow. This is a beautiful and moving story about the capacity of the human spirit for forgiveness, community, the creation of art, and the enjoyment of beauty, wherever and however it can be found.