The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden

Far from being an easy read and by that I am referring to the painful events depicted here, the author focuses on the other souls that the history books have yet to mention without diluting the pain that the Jews suffered throughout this atrocious time. McFadden wrote to deliver this story that I am in awe of her writing. There is so much beauty in the words that Bernice L. The capital fall to the Germans and Lizard and Harlan are captured and sent to concentration camps. Unfortunately, the euphoric bliss that comes with their new lives in Paris is short lived. He declares his love for a young Gwendolyn Gill who immigrated from Barbados, but at the first opportunity leaves her with child and is off to get his next fix for bliss that he finds in the Parisian cabarets in France where he performs with his dearest friend Lizard Robbins, Jewish raised but of an African heart. The more he plays, the more he drinks and the less reliable he becomes. The author has depicted the character of Harlan to be one of a lazy drunken womanizer with a real talent for music. The young boy who was Harlan is only re-introduced to a pair of stranger parents after his grandparents passing and the adjustment is less than smooth. While I start my review with the bleak passage of the book, I have to point out that this is not what “The Book Of Harlan” is only about.īefore the Second World War, we are introduced to a young Harlan raised by his grandparents in Macon, Georgia, while his parents, in pursuit of a musical stardom settle in Harlem.

However for Harlan and many others in the 1940s and other past wars, the digital age was yet to manifest and many accounts remained hidden. Although nowadays, social media has made a willing or reluctant witness of every single individual owning a digitally connected device on the planet, enabling us all to watch the atrocities of the world with one click and rendering those events more difficult to hide. The book that taught me a truth that I suspected but never knew for sure.Ī time period that my mind is too young to fathom, because while growing up, war was a topic for the history books.

The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden