Synopses & Reviews
A captivating debut novel,
Hidden marvelously re-creates New York City in the 1920s, from the hustle and bustle of the Lower East Side to the hushed hallways of the homes of the rich and powerful. In graceful, eloquent prose, Victoria Lustbader presents a fierce, compelling story of loyalty, forbidden desire, and the end of innocence.
The battlefield traumas of The Great War cement an improbable friendship between Jed Gates, scion of the wealthy Gates family, and David Warshinsky, first-generation American from New York's poverty-ridden lower East Side. David sacrifices his family and his Jewish heritage in pursuit of his untamable ambition, while, in eerie parallel, Jed sacrifices his private desires to assume the burdens of familial expectations. David's young sister Sarah suffers the torments of a sweatshop and hardens her heart to the brother she once adored. Jed's rebellious sister Lucy becomes a nurse in Margaret Sanger's revolutionary birth control clinic. Sarah finds a tender love in sensitive Reuben Winokur, an immigrant tailor destined to prosper in his new country, but Lucy falls hard for David, who belongs to another. Brilliantly evoking time, place, and person, Hidden draws readers deep into the past to illuminate the present. For nothing is more eternal than human feeling, and nothing more important to the human heart.
Review
"The fully dimensional and deftly drawn characters--especially Jed's grandfather, Joseph, and mother, Sally--keep the reader entranced with their conniving and duplicity. This hard-to-put-down, historically accurate tale is filled with conversations that are both realistic and entertaining."--
Library Journal on
Hidden
"The story of these two families comes to life as the marriages, deaths, births, desires and ambitions of the different characters jump off the page and into readers' imaginations. The characters are vibrant and full-bodied: the factory hand, the Henry Street Settlement worker, the financier, the artist, the flapper, the religious conservative. This is a gripping story that's lots of fun."--Romantic Times BOOKReviews (4 ½ stars) on Hidden
"With characters ranging from robber barons to spiritualists, and settings as seemingly disparate as the trenches of World War I and the concrete canyons of Manhattan, Hidden explores the impact that a world in flux has upon its citizenry. Deftly, masterfully, and with the utmost compassion, Lustbader writes of families - and a world - suffering the pangs of growth while searching for grace. Hidden is a truly spirited debut."
--James Reese, author of The Book of Shadows and The Book of Spirits "Fun to read . . . Lustbader [has] skill in making us genuinely interested in
[her] characters . . . delivers robustly on its promise to take readers
into another era."--The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
A captivating debut novel,
Hidden marvelously re-creates New York City in the 1920s, from the hustle and bustle of the Lower East Side to the hushed hallways of the homes of the rich and powerful. In graceful, eloquent prose, Victoria Lustbader presents a fierce, compelling story of loyalty, forbidden desire, and the end of innocence.
The battlefield traumas of The Great War cement an improbable friendship between Jed Gates, scion of the wealthy Gates family, and David Warshinsky, first-generation American from New York's poverty-ridden lower East Side. David sacrifices his family and his Jewish heritage in pursuit of his untamable ambition, while, in eerie parallel, Jed sacrifices his private desires to assume the burdens of familial expectations. David's young sister Sarah suffers the torments of a sweatshop and hardens her heart to the brother she once adored. Jed's rebellious sister Lucy becomes a nurse in Margaret Sanger's revolutionary birth control clinic. Sarah finds a tender love in sensitive Reuben Winokur, an immigrant tailor destined to prosper in his new country, but Lucy falls hard for David, who belongs to another. Brilliantly evoking time, place, and person, Hidden draws readers deep into the past to illuminate the present. For nothing is more eternal than human feeling, and nothing more important to the human heart.
Video
About the Author
Victoria Schochet Lustbader has had a long and varied career in publishing, including stints as the editor of
Analog magazine and as Senior Editor for SF/Fantasy at the Berkley Publishing Group. Marriage to bestselling author Eric Van Lustbader led to retirement and work as a freelance editor. It also led to a new career in environmentalism when Victoria Lustbader joined The Nature Conservancy as a local volunteer. She soon became a member of the Development and Communications Staff and later a member of the Board for Long Island and all of New York State.
Lustbader and her husband, both native New Yorkers, have homes in New York City and Southampton. They travel frequently and have spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, Boston, several locations in Florida, and Paris, France.