Golden, Peter, (Nothing Is Forgotten [hc, Atria Books, 2018] 978-1501146800 [pb, Atria Books, 2019] 978-1501146817 [adds a unique angle to the Jewish crime narrative by looking at crime through the lens of Soviet smuggling and post-WWII vengeance. The story begins in 1960s New Jersey when the grandmother of the protagonist, Michael Daniels, is murdered inside her candy store. To solve her murder, Michael travels to Cold War-era Europe and Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. Instead of focusing on organized street gangs (like Italian or traditional American-Jewish mobs), the novel explores the Soviet black market (“Der Schmuggler”) and the criminal lengths European Jews went to for basic survival and escape during and after World War II. The novel shows how trauma, identity, and displacement force individuals into “criminal” undergrounds. The central mystery explores the legacy of Holocaust survivors and the moral ambiguity of vigilante justice or hidden pasts in the face of absolute atrocity. It vividly portrays the trauma of Eastern European Jews (specifically from Ukraine/Russia) who emigrated to America in the mid-20th century. A central pillar of the book is the absolute secrecy of the elder generation, who hid their Jewish wartime histories from their Americanized children to protect them. It contrasts the life of an American Jew growing up during the Red Scare with Soviet-Jewish life under Khrushchev’s regime.
United States · Fiction author
Peter Golden
Peter Golden (born in Newark, NJ, est. late 1940s, resides in Guilderland, NY) [B.A. in philosophy from SUNY Albany. Journalism career, focusing on Cold War history, international relations, and political biographies and including interviews with American Presidents, Soviet and Israeli leaders. In 1992, he published Quiet Diplomat, a biography of the Jewish-American industrialist and political insider Max M. Fisher. He later transitioned to writing sweeping historical fiction, beginning with his debut Comeback Love (2012), followed by Wherever There Is Light (2015) and Nothing Is Forgotten (2018). His novels directly address the theme of Jews and crime, but they treat crime primarily as a historical lens for survival, assimilation, and family secrets rather than standard genre fiction.
Golden, Peter, (Wherever There Is Light [hc, Atria Books, 2015]) 978-1476705583 [pb, Atria Books, 2016] 978-1501107634 [Follows the decades-long, sweeping love affair between Julian Rose and Kendall Ann Wakefield. The protagonist, Julian Rose, is a Jewish bootlegger who builds a fortune during Prohibition. Beyond the bootlegging aspect, the novel explores a fascinating, overlooked piece of history: historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) hiring and rescuing German-Jewish professors who fled Nazi Germany. It is a deep dive into Jewish immigration, assimilation, and Black-Jewish relations in mid-century America. - Google/AI]