18 Mayıs 2017 Perşembe

The Sweetness by Sande Boritz Berger





Based on her real family, Sande Boritz Berger’s THE SWEETNESS follows the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, set during World War II, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge.
Vilna, 1941. When they are forced from their ghetto by the invading Nazis, Rosha Kaninsky, an inquisitive young girl, clings to her grandmother and asks why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water. “Something to remind me of the sweetness,” she tells the child. Brooklyn, 1941. Rosha’s cousin, Mira Kane, a talented teenager with dreams of escaping to Hollywood for a career in fashion design, finds her plans abruptly thwarted. Traumatized by what he believes is the fate of his Vilna relatives, Mira’s father is intent on safeguarding those he loves from a brutal world─ corralling them all within the nub of his guilt. But unbeknownst to her American family, Rosha is alive. During the Vilna round-up, her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who hides the girl— placing her entire family at risk. Inspired by true events, The Sweetness is a novel about the destructive force of survivor guilt—and how it endures. 

Book History
The book was published by She Writes Press in late 2014, but being a small press, they never exploited any subsidiary rights. So, when Sande came to me in connection with her latest book (almost ready for submissions!) I was shocked to see that this incredibly moving book was only available in print and ebook. I, of course, naturally immediately thought of pursuing subsidiary rights while we get her latest ready for submissions (SPLIT-LEVEL, a women’s fiction).

As you can see from the all the blurbs and praise below, THE SWEETNESS has a ton of accolades, and continues to draw attention, having sold over 35K copies to date and counting and as such, feel strongly this can still do very well despite coming out later than the initial launch. Especially as we get ready to shop her latest book in the next month or two.

Bio
After two decades as a scriptwriter and video/film producer for Fortune 500 companies, Sande Boritz Berger returned to her passion: writing both fiction and non-fiction full time. Her stories and essays have been published in The Rambler Magazine, Every Woman Has a Story by Warner Books, Ophelia's Mom by Crown Publishing, Aunties: Thirty-five Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother by Ballantine and others. Sande received an M.F.A. in Writing and Literature from Stony Brook Southampton College where she received the Deborah Hecht Memorial prize for fiction. The Sweetness was a semi-finalist in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel awards. The author lives with her husband in Manhattan. She has two daughters.

Foreward Reviews Indie Fab Finalist in Historical Fiction

USA Book Reviews Best Books of the Year Finalist

Nominated by the A.L.A. for The Sophie Brody Award in Fiction
“[A] stirring debut novel of Holocaust survivor guilt―guilt about being safe. Told with candor and tenderness ...” 
—Booklist
“A Jewish girl in Eastern Europe and her teenage American cousin experience the Holocaust years in vastly different ways in this bittersweet novel... A tender look at immigrants in America and Nazi victims in Europe succeeds in educating and engaging readers.”
—Kirkus
“[The Sweetness] is a beautifully crafted portrait of life in its rawest form during a time of great unrest.”
—Publishers Weekly, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards
“As Berger's novel moves back and forth from Vilna to Brooklyn, the focus is on Rosha and Mira as well as on Charlie's sister Jeanette. All three attempt to make sense of a life that often makes no sense at all. VERDICT: In this engaging debut, a semifinalist for Amazon's annual Breakthrough Novel Award, readers gain three different views of the effects of World War II on ordinary people.”
Library Journal
“Sande Boritz Berger has written an engrossing family tale filled with promise and hope while paying homage to the undercurrent of survivor's guilt that can coexist beside that joy. The Sweetness explores themes of morality, fate and death while illuminating how grief can effect even a generation removed, and even those thought to be spared. A great read that will touch your heart.”
- NYT Best Seller Judy L. Mandel, author of Replacement Child
“The Sweetness is one of those rare novels that knowingly informs us about not one but two very different worlds. Although we think we are familiar with the horrors of the Holocaust, we can never be. Although we assume we can understand survivor's guilt, we cannot. One of this novel's strengths, perhaps surprisingly, is its restraint. Sande Boritz Berger's skillful juxtaposition of two very different girls, their tenacity, their search, is searing. And memorable.”
─   Lou Ann Walker, Editor of The Southampton Review
“It is always pleasant to read an author who can take you back to the past with minute details that cause you to revive faded memories. Sande Boritz Berger does this for Americans who lived during the 1940s by recalling items such as the monthly magazine Modern Screen, one of the first journals to record the private lives of movie stars, mascara which came in cake form and had to be applied with a wet brush, and cut glass doorknobs. She used these touches to set the scene for life in a residential middle class section of Brooklyn as well as for contrast of the superficial lives of Americans who were untouched (or thought they were) by World War II and those who terrifyingly lived through it in Poland. Berger tells the story of two girls, Mira, a teen living in a large house on Avenue T in Brooklyn and Rosha, an eight-year-old, living in the basement of a stranger’s house in Poland. These two are cousins who have never met. And the suspense leading up to when their lives will intersect is kept up throughout the book.”
—Jewish Book World
“Original characters, against a backdrop of vivid and exact period detail, drive this highly readable saga of two uniquely different Jewish girls and their families during World War II. Warm, rich, and smooth as glass, their stories sweep over you and into your heart. A solid read for devotees of WWII literature, as much for its retelling of the ravages of the Holocaust, as for its insightful vision of a home front population shaken by shock-waves from abroad.
- Mary Glickman, author of Home in the Morning, 2011 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for One More River.

“As Berger's novel moves back and forth from Vilna to Brooklyn, the focus is on Rosha and Mira as well as on Charlie's sister Jeanette. All three attempt to make sense of a life that often makes no sense at all. VERDICT: In this engaging debut, a semifinalist for Amazon's annual Breakthrough Novel Award, readers gain three different views of the effects of World War II on ordinary people.”
Library Journal Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS 

“Despite the title, bitterness is the dark driving force in this stirring debut novel of Holocaust survivor guilt--guilt about being safe. Told with candor and tenderness, there are two parallel stories of Jewish girls--one a teen, one an eight year old-- from the same family but worlds apart during WWII.” 
─ Booklist Hazel Rochman  
“Sande Boritz Berger’s impressive debut novel examines the lives of two Jewish girls, cousins separated by an ocean and connected by brutal world events. Ms. Berger doesn’t shrink from the rough history that informs her heroines’ lives, but she mitigates its harshness with a deep measure of sympathy and hope.”
—Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man
“Sande Boritz Berger has created a complete, rich novel about survivor guilt and innocence. The guilt is readily understood. The innocence is an original thought. How are people who survived the Nazis supposed to know how to behave in the face of unique evil? The Kanes (Kaninskys) endured the general experience of Jews who got out. But within that experience, they are also a family of complicated individuals, who pursue differentiated goals. It is this―their individuality, not unlike that of the Anne Frank family―that gives Ms. Berger’s novel its power as a work of art.”
—Roger Rosenblatt, author of The Boy Detective
“Ms. Berger has captured the essence of conflict between survivor guilt and the innocence of youth as she compares the circumstances between one family’s choice to stay as the other flees. While the tone is not maudlin, Berger’s voice resonates across the pages with a deep and soulful pain as she depicts the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Vilna Ghetto. It is clear she did her research given she infused historical information and tied her story line to actual events with the backdrop of an epically tragic time in history.”
—Diane Lunsford, Feathered Quill Reviews
“Original characters, against a backdrop of vivid and exact period detail, drive this highly readable saga of two uniquely different Jewish girls and their families during World War II. Warm, rich, and smooth as glass, their stories sweep over you and into your heart. A solid read for devotees of WWII literature, as much for its retelling of the ravages of the Holocaust as for its insightful vision of a home front population shaken by shock waves from abroad.”
—Mary Glickman, author of Home in the Morning


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