Lisa Lieberman's Blog - Posts Tagged "hungary"

Paternalism is the reigning motif of Somewhere in Europe. Under the old man's tutelage, the orphans discover the virtues of solidarity and work. Together they patch up the castle, parceling out the chores according to age, gender, and ability, and making sure that each member of the group has enough to eat and a dry place to sleep. "The world is already yours. You just don't know it," Simon assures them. Once the fascists are gone, he promises, "new people will write new laws in the name of all who need help." He is so fatherly, so benign, that you want to believe him.

Read the rest of my column on Three Quarks Daily.

Desecrated synagogue in Mád, Hungary. A key scene of Burning Cold is set here.

Cara and Gray venture into Budapest during the 1956 revolution in search of their half-brother Zoltán, the forgotten son of their father’s first marriage. They track him to Mád, a small town in the Tokaj wine region on Hungary’s eastern border, a place I chose simply because of the potential for wordplay. Then I learned the fate of Mád’s once-thriving Jewish community.

Some three hundred men, women, and children were locked in the town’s synagogue when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, deprived of food and water for three days, then herded into cattle cars with the help of the Arrow Cross (Hungarian militia). Most perished in Auschwitz.

–From "Travels with Cara," Mystery Scene magazine


I'm running a promotion with Fussy Librarian this week. You can get the e-book of Burning Cold for .99 through April 21.