Greetings Treat-A-Weekers,

So my attainable goal (I hope) with this blog is to entertain you.  As such, I do my best to find books, movies, shows and more that will capture your attention and give you a bit of a boost.  My aspirational goal is to give you ideas that could elevate your life in some small way (I can’t help it, it’s the girl scout in me).  So, with that in mind, I come to the very tough but hopefully inspiring subject of today’s post which revolves around excellent novels which all address the same topic: World War II & the Nazi Occupation of France.  A few years back I read Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay and found it so moving, so tragic, that the imagery and injustice of what happened to the protagonist and her brother in the book stayed with me long after I had finished the actual novel.  I thought I wouldn’t have it in me to read another book about on this topic, but then came Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See, which my Houston book club declared was a “must read.”  The beauty of the prose, the suspense of the story, the journeys taken by the male and female protagonists, the brief love they experience, all added up to some of the most fulfilling reading I had undertaken in a very long time.

Shortly after this, one of my Houston dear ones, early childhood teacher extraordinaire and mother to one of my oldest’s closest friends, Jenny Moore, insisted that I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.  Now I take Jenny Moore’s recommendations very seriously.  She is the queen of comfort reading (and baking).  She is that friend who when you are down cheers you up, whips up a scrumptious Texas Grandmother’s Sheet Cake (chocolate, yum), gives delicious bear hugs and makes comfort dinners on the regular.  Her friendship, in and of itself, is a treat.  Jenny and I are generally on the same page with our reading choices. Translation: both of us like books that are equal parts heart and cozy.  So, when Jenny recommended The Nightingale, yet another book about survival during World War II, I must admit, I was perplexed and tempted to ignore her recommendation.  I did ignore it for about a year or two, but then one day I picked up the book and decided to read the first chapter and continue only if I was really hooked.  And you guessed it dear Treat-a-Weeker, I got hooked.

What hooked me, you ask? Well, at heart, this is a novel about love, sisterhood, self-knowledge and the then often overlooked strength and resilience of women. It is also a book that hammers home that the only traits that truly get us through the unbearable are love and courage.  The Nightingale tells the story of two sisters, diametrically different in personality and circumstances when the war hits (the younger, Isabelle, is friendless and alone, single, strong-willed and rebellious; the older, Vianne is married and happily settled in the French countryside with her doting husband and sweet young daughter and is surrounded by a community of  beloved friends and neighbors) who struggle for survival following the Nazi Occupation of France.  The ways both women chose to survive are kept secret from each other for much of the novel and only the reader knows how truly alike the two sisters actually are.  While I was reading the almost 600 page novel filled with love, suspense, and settings described in such rich detail that I felt as if I was there, I actually was on a trip to Prague.  While there, the group I was with visited Terezin Concentration Camp.  It was an extremely sad and sobering journey and while on the bus back from the camp, I spoke with a Jewish friend, Rita, about the strange coincidence that I was reading the Nightingale and had recently read two other books dealing with the atrocities and tragedies of the Holocaust, and now here I was that very day visiting a former concentration camp.  What a confluence of random but perhaps related events…was there some significance to it?  We discussed the steady stream of new, beautifully written, stirring, best-selling books about the Holocaust/World War II that had been published in increasing numbers over the past few years.  And then Rita said something that stuck with me.  She said, “you know the thing about these books is that they are all great, but I don’t want to read about the details of the tragedies that happened as much as I want to read  about why the Holocaust happened, the circumstances that allowed this movement of hate to grow so that we can make sure something like it never happens again.”

And that’s when it hit me…the message of The Nightingale, and the other books I had recently read, to me, right now, was to resist — in whatever ways we can, at the earliest opportunity,  when the status quo is leading us on a downward spiral…It’s my turn and the turn of so many of us disheartened and concerned about the toxic state of affairs in politics, global affairs, the environment, race relations and more, to do whatever we can to change things for the better lest the negative forces, people and politics that seek to divide us actually win. Yes, it can be dangerous to our sense of comfort, security, even popularity to publicly dissent about things that the majority are not protesting, but if we don’t do so, early and often from the first we get wind of the injustice, we risk never having the opportunity to do so later on down the road.

And so, let’s do what we can to resist the current mess we find ourselves in – contribute to the Environmental Defense Fund, recycle and read about how to reduce our individual and collective carbon footprints. Let’s help local refugees in our communities and advocate for immigration reform by voting for people who will make it happen.  Let’s bust out of our self-imposed isolation and echo chambers and bring people of different backgrounds together for meals at our homes or fun events like neighborhood barbecues and actually engage with them and promote understanding and the realization that we are all more alike than we are different.   Let’s make others aware of each and every injustice that happens to another innocent soul that we learn about whether through posting about it on social media or having coffee talks with friends on the topic. Let’s help political candidates who we know will fight for truth, justice, and equality for all and who will advocate for people in the most dire circumstances.   Let’s make injustice and occurrences in America and throughout the world that conflict with America’s finest ideals known and condemned.  It will be uncomfortable at times.  But we will earn the respect of many and more importantly, we will respect ourselves and our efforts, for there is no substitute to doing the right thing.

Resistance with purpose is empowering.  We all need to be the change we want to see in the world or risk the world changing for the worse and living with the knowledge that we did not do enough to right things when it mattered.

And that my friends, is all I wrote — until next week, I remain,

Yours truly,

M