Wiseman, Eva. The Last Song.

Wiseman, Eva.  The Last Song.  Tundra Books     232p  $17.95      978-0-88776-979-5       ms/hs       VG-BN       Historical Fiction

This novel is a story that needs to be told, about a family that must hide its Jewish heritage against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition.

For children, the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition are difficult to understand and even more difficult to teach in a way that is both educational and acceptable.  The Inquisition is often abridged in a world history course because of its violent nature.  The tortures of Torquemada and his henchmen are well-known and vile.  Eva Wiseman has found a realistic yet imaginative way to present the story of a Jewish family’s struggle to survive amidst treachery and prejudice.  Her plot and descriptions tell the story without undue horror.  The goal of the Inquisition was to rid Spain of false practitioners of Catholicism, but an ulterior motive of greed was definitely present.  Who would benefit if Spain expelled the Jews?  Since Jews were not able to take any silver and gold on their exile, Spain would! 

Young Isabel knows nothing of her Jewish heritage.  Instead, she is raised by her parents as a Catholic.  Her father is a physician to the monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, and he adores his daughter.  Thinking he will betroth her to Luis, who comes from a reputable family, in order to protect her, he is unaware of Luis’s shortcomings.  When Isabella meets Yonah, a young Jewish jewelry maker, she falls in love, both with him and with her Jewish heritage.  She hides her identity to go to a meeting with other Jewish “converts” and spurns Luis.  When her father is arrested by the Grand Inquisitor, she realizes that the family’s fate is in her hands.  Her father will die if she does not act!  Wiseman’s creativity shines here as she has Isabel approach Torquemada with the accusation that they are related and that he is part Jewish!  In the grand finale, the Jews are evicted from Spain. The outcome depends entirely on the good graces of Uncle Diego, one of Torquemada’s familiars.  Wiseman continues her tradition of educating the world with her unique combination of history and fiction, a dramatic writing style, and grand storytelling ability.          

Spanish Inquisition-Fiction, Jews in Spain-Fiction    --Martha Squaresky

Puppet

Wiseman, Eva      Puppet      

 Tundra Books      2009  243p  $11.99     

978-1-77049-296-7   E-B    ms/hs       Historical fiction       

In this historical novel, based on a real trial, young readers will learn that atrocities committed against Jews did not only occur during World War II.  What the reader experiences in this novel parallels what he/she might experience reading a novel about the Holocaust, with one exception.  Puppet is set in Hungary in the 1800s, when Jews were feared for their differences as well as their economic prosperity. 

In Tosza-Eszlar, Hungary, a young girl suddenly disappears.  Instead of investigating, town leaders listen to the ramblings of some mourners who immediately blame the Jews for kidnapping her to bleed her for their religious rituals.  The protagonist, a young village girl named Julie, is herself a victim of an abusive and negligent father who, upon the death of his wife, has given his younger daughter Clara to an aunt to raise and farmed Julie out to the local prison to be a maid.  Taught by her mother to judge people fairly, Julie knows in her heart that the Jews did not kill her friend Esther.  Local leaders have tortured young Morris Scharf to wring a confession from him that his father and several others were involved in the kidnapping and murder, and Julie is unable to help Morris because he is being brainwashed by Warden Henter.  Henter manages to procure a confession from Morris in exchange for a promise that Morris’s father will not be put to death. 

The reader will be drawn into the plot, the character development, the internal as well as external conflicts and the injustice that is perpetrated on the Jews of Tosza-Eszlar.  Author Eva Wiseman reaches her readers by pushing and pulling her characters through situations that evoke sympathy one moment and hatred the next.  This is a powerful novel.       

E-BN        Martha Squaresky        Antisemitism, Hungary-History, Murder trials