Alexandra Silber's Upcoming Novel Tells of Life 'After Anatevka'

     . . . .  This novel, which tells the story of Fiddler on the Roof's Hodel, Tevye's daughter who chooses to follow her the radical socialist lover, Perchik, to a work camp in Siberia instead of immigrating out of Russia with her family. It's one of the most heartbreaking moments in theater history, or so it is to me, who let us not forget, doesn't know much about theater, and is generally uninterested in musicals.  But Fiddler on the Roof is one of those exceptions.

Information about Alexandra Silber and her need to write this novel here -- in her acting career she has played the roles of both of Teyva's daughters.

Silber picks up  Hodel' story when she arrives at the work camp.  It's brutal, as these things were.

This is a novel I wish to read, even though Kirkus, among others, have been fairly snooty about it.

The New York Times wrote about this last year (pay wall, so here's the full url)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/books/for-fiddler-actor-turned-novelist-a-journey-from-stage-to-page.html

An Account of Reconstruction, 1865 - 1866 by a British Imperialist

K -- you will find this fascinating, in light of the books you're currently reading. 

"Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke’s fascinatingly odd Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries," (published 1868).

The heads-up for this from a blog I like, though some of the blogger's statements are, if not exactly wrong, not correct. For example the blogger states that the UK backed the Confederacy. The UK government never did back the Confederacy in any of the ways that mattered, and for which the Confederacy lobbyed until the end: financially (no loans), no weapons and no embargo of the Union, either diplomatic or mercantilist.

As for the blogger's conclusion, I have to agree wholeheartedly:

But the most telling passage for me, is this one — which occurred in the ellipsis above — in which we see most clearly how the problem of black free labor literally disappears under racism. When he asks the assembled whites about what kind of work the free blacks do, they literally cannot answer him. Though he has seen almost nothing in the entire town but black industrious labor, free black labor is so unthinkable to the ” poor trash” that when he points it out, they erase his very words with a spelling lesson on race hatred:

Strangers are scarce in Norfolk, and it was not long before I found an excuse for entering into conversation with the “citizens.” My first question was not received with much cordiality by my new acquaintance. “How do the negroes work? Wall, we spells nigger with two ‘g’s,’ I reckon.” Virginians, I must explain, are used to ” reckon” as much as are New Englanders to ” guess,” while Western men ” calculate ” as often as they cease to swear.) ” How does the niggers work? Wall, niggers is darned fools, certain, but they ain’t quite sich fools as to work while the Yanks will feed ‘em. No, sir, not quite sich fools as that.” Hardly deeming it wise to point to the negroes working in the sun-blaze within a hundred yards, while we sat rocking ourselves in the verandah of the inn, I changed my tack, and asked whether things were settling down in Norfolk.

That non-work ethic of the former confederacy? It’s alive and well among certain white southern populations still, as we learned while living in New Orleans.

Dorgan's Immigration Bill Speech in the Senate

It's long, like 8 minutes. Well worth the time.

He's so danged reasonable ....