Hamlet's Children: A Novel

by Richard Kluger

Overview

When grave family misfortune leaves thirteen-year-old Terry Sayre without parents or relatives to care for him in the summer of 1939, his only option to elude foster care is to accept asylum abroad with his mother's Danish kin. Despondent but not given to self-pity, Terry begins life anew sheltered in his formidable grandparents' home in a coastal town an hour's drive from Copenhagen. But within months of his arrival, the Second World War breaks out. Serving as the emotional prism through which that monumental struggle is refracted, Terry's older self recounts his precarious coming of age as an alien marooned in a disconcerting new land throughout its long national nightmare — an ordeal none of his peers was enduring back home safe in America.

Spared the savage treatment Nazi Germany dealt other countries, Denmark was allowed to remain nominally self-governing. Good fortune, though, did not allow the proud, peace-loving little kingdom to escape the toll the war took on its people's collective soul. Fearful of openly resisting or secretly harassing the German occupation at risk of lethal reprisals, Denmark made a complicitous pact with its tormentors to feed and equip their armed forces. As a result, the Danes suffered from self-hatred at home and contempt abroad as a land of shameless collaborators bartering their country's honor to survive the war unbloodied.

Hamlet's Children by Richard Kluger is the story of a young American's wrenching assimilation with his Danish relatives and of how he is pinioned in the same cruel vise with his adopted countrymen as they cunningly attempt to subvert the Germans' iron grip on their kingdom. Paramount on this agenda of defiance is the Danes' persistent effort to keep their Jewish neighbors out of the Nazis' murderous hands. Vibrant with memorable characters and fraught with tension, this artfully crafted narrative, both heartbreaking and uplifting, is a testament to the human spirit in its bleakest hours.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160956169
Publisher:	ScarletTanagerBooks
Publication date:	08/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

A native of Paterson, N.J., Richard Kluger grew up in Manhattan,
graduated from Princeton University, where he chaired The Daily
Princetonian, and as a young journalist worked for The Wall Street Journal,
the pre-Murdoch New York Post and Forbes magazine before becoming
the last literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune. When the Tribune
folded, Kluger entered the book industry, rising to executive editor of
Simon and Schuster, editor-in-chief of Atheneum, and publisher of
Charterhouse Books.
Moved by the cultural upheavals sweeping across the U.S. in the
1960s, Kluger left publishing and devoted six years to writing Simple Justice,
widely regarded as the definitive account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s
landmark 1954 decision outlawing racial segregation in American public
schools. Hailed by The Nation as “a monumental accomplishment” and
the Harvard Law Review as “a major contribution to our understanding of
the Supreme Court,” it was a finalist for the National Book Award. So,
too, was Kluger’s second nonfiction work, The Paper: The Life and Death of
the New York Herald Tribune, followed by Ashes to Ashes, a lacerating history
of the lethal cigarette industry, awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The New York
Times Book Review described it as “a great battleship of a book – majestic
. . . guided with discerning literary skill.” He also authored three other
works of U.S. social history: Seizing Destiny, about the relentless expansion
of America’s borders; The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek, about a tragic
clash between white settlers and a tribal nation in Washington territory,
and Indelible Ink, about colonial newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger
and the birth of press freedom in America.
Of Kluger’s seven previous novels, the most widely read have been
Members of the Tribe, about which the Chicago Tribune wrote, “This excellent
novel is a sobering story . . . filled with anguish and a sense of injustice,
of hopes carefully nurtured and casually betrayed,” and The Sheriff of
Nottingham, which Time called “richly imagined and beautifully written.”
He also co-authored two novels with his wife Phyllis, a fiber artist and
herself the author of two books on needlework design. The Klugers live
in Berkeley.

Editorial Reviews

Meticulously researched and strikingly imagined, Hamlet's Children possesses treasures for a wide range of readers, from history buffs to high school students (teachers take note!). Richard Kluger has created a pitch-perfect 1940s narrator in plucky young Terry Sayre — and the perfect set of eyes and ears for revealing the agonizing choices faced by the Danes during the Second World War. Harrowing and ultimately heartwarming, HAMLET'S CHILDREN will keep you turning pages far into the night.

Advance praise - Barbara Quick