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Book Review :: Isabela’s Way by Barbara Stark-Nemon

Isabela’s Way by Barbara Stark-Nemon book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

During the Spanish Inquisition (1492 and 1834), the Catholic Church targeted Jews, Muslims, female herbalists and healers, and, later, Protestants for expulsion from Spain and Portugal. The goal, writes author Barbara Stark-Nemon in her introduction to Isabela’s Way, was the consolidation of power by King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.

By all accounts, the Inquisition was brutal, and Stark-Nemon writes that following an expulsion edict issued by Spain in 1492, many Spanish Jews emigrated to Portugal, where for approximately 100 years, “New Christians” — Jewish converts to Catholicism, sometimes called Conversos or Marranos — evaded the Inquisitors. But peace was always tentative.

For 14-year-old Isabela de Castro Nunez, the life she’d known as a Converso ended when, in 1605, the Bubonic Plague hit the small town of Abrantes, Portugal, where she’d grown up. This was because the Church blamed New Christians for the spread of the deadly disease.

It’s a tense setup. Compounding this, Isabela is grappling with her mother’s death and her father’s prolonged absence to promote his business and political interests, leaving her feeling both abandoned and alone. Add in the looming political repression directed at her community, and it is not surprising that Isabela, her friend David, and his sisters listen when advised to flee their homeland for the presumed safety of France.

Stark-Nemon’s recreation of their fictional journey — sometimes traveling together and sometimes traveling separately — is filled with intrigue, violence, love, and the kindness of strangers. Moreover, a beautifully imagined network of clandestine safe houses comes to life, and we see Isabela, already renowned for her intricate embroidery, mature as she embarks on this harrowing journey.

Isabela’s Way is a tale of resilience in which good overcomes evil. All told, the novel is a vivid depiction of resistance and a powerful indictment of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and scapegoating. It’s a damn good story.

Isabela’s Way by Barbara Stark-Nemon. She Writes Press, September 2025.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: Always There, Always Gone by Marty Ross-Dolen

Always There, Always Gone by Marty Ross-Dolen book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

From earliest childhood, memoirist Marty Ross-Dolen, a now-retired child psychiatrist, knew that her mother’s life had been marked by something she could only glimpse, but which manifested as a sadness and sense of loss that nothing could fix. As she came of age, she learned the reason: her mother, Patricia [called Patsy] the second of five children, had been orphaned in 1960 when she was fourteen. A plane carrying her parents – the executives at Highlights for Children Magazine – had been flying to a meeting in New York City to discuss expanded newsstand placement when a collision between their commercial jet and another plane left no survivors. This abrupt end to life as she knew it catapulted Patsy and her siblings from their midwestern home into the home of relatives in Texas. Although they were well cared for and well-treated, from that moment on, a gaping absence hovered over every aspect of Patsy’s life.

Likewise for daughter Marty, who feared upsetting her mom by asking too many questions about the people whose photos stared at her from the living room mantlepiece. Still, she wanted to know more about her maternal lineage, so she started digging. The result, Always There, Always Gone, involved fourteen years of research, including the perusal of thousands of letters – miraculously saved by family and Highlights archivists – between Ross-Dolen’s grandmother, Mary Martin Myers, and her business associates and relatives before her death at age thirty-eight.

The result is a genre-bending memoir, offering readers fragments that Ross-Dolen calls “wisps,” a blend of conventional narrative, erasure poetry, imagined conversations between her and her grandmother, and family photographs. Moving, if somewhat enigmatic, the memoir is an emotionally rich interrogation of the legacy of grief on people who are both directly and indirectly impacted by tragedy. A wise and thoughtful addition to our understanding of the long-term effects of trauma and its transmission from parent to child.

Always There, Always Gone by Marty Ross-Dolen. She Writes Press, May 2025.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: My Marriage Sabbatical: A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love by Leah Fisher

My Marriage Sabbatical: A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love by Leah Fisher book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

By the time psychotherapist Leah Fisher was in her early 60s, she was sick of eating dinner alone while her husband, Charley, worked late into the evening. She was also sick of his reluctance to take an extended vacation. But rather than stew in resentment or anger, she presented him with a carefully thought-out plan. If he couldn’t envision taking a year-long trip – a real break from their life in the San Francisco Bay – she’d go alone.

As she presented it, the idea was more of a negotiation than an ultimatum. After all, Fisher still loved Charley and wanted to remain married. Nonetheless, she was ready for something new, an adventure. As the pair talked, they came up with an arrangement in which Fisher would travel for several months and then return home for a week or two. They also broached sexual infidelity and developed ground rules for what would, and would not, be allowed. Moreover, Charley arranged his occasional vacations to meet her in some of the seven countries – Bali, Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Java, and Mexico – she visited.

Fisher’s travels – staying in each location for a month or longer – allowed her to learn Spanish and dance salsa, all while maintaining the spark between her and her mate. It also allowed her to contribute to the communities she visited. Indeed, Fisher moved beyond tourism and volunteered in numerous capacities, running a short-term women’s group and translating and adapting a workbook, first created for American hurricane survivors, to help kids process their emotions after a mudslide destroyed their homes.

Deeply felt and emotionally honest, Fisher spent 16 years writing and revising My Marriage Sabbatical. As she and Charley continually alter their relationship, they model lived feminism and compromise. The result is wanderlust-inducing – the stuff of dreams and daring.

My Marriage Sabbatical: A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love by Leah Fisher. She Writes Press, January 2025.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: The Other Side of Nothing by Anastasia Zadeik

The Other Side of Nothing by Anastasia Zadeik book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

The Other Side of Nothing, Anastasia Zadeik’s second novel, is an emotionally resonant exploration of what it means to love someone with a life-threatening mental illness. The story centers around Julia, a suicidal soon-to-be-18-year-old who believes that she hastened her father’s death from cancer. After signing herself into a psychiatric hospital, she begins to stabilize. That is, until she meets 23-year-old Sam in group therapy. Sam, an up-and-coming artist, is everything Julia admires and they immediately become a couple. But things unravel almost as quickly as they began.

As Sam’s release date approaches, he convinces Julia to bolt the facility and join him on a cross-country road trip to Yosemite National Park. Once there, he intends to replicate Ansel Adams’ photo of Half Dome. From the start troubles lurk: Sam discards his medication, takes Julia’s cell phone, and becomes increasingly manic and controlling. Julia is terrified.

The hospital, meanwhile, has no clue about Julia’s whereabouts, and although staff have suspicions, they also know that they have to do something–and fast. Despite hesitation, they notify Sam and Julia’s mothers about the disappearance, prompting the pair to take a harrowing road trip of their own.

The Other Side of Nothing addresses heavy themes–bipolar disorder, depression, suicide–with sensitivity and grace, making the book both illuminating and unforgettable.

The Other Side of Nothing by Anastasia Zadeik. She Writes Press, May 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: All for You by Dena Rueb Romero

All for You by Dena Rueb Romero book cover image

Dena Rueb Romero’s memoir, All for You, tells an incredible story about a love affair between the author’s German Lutheran mother, Deta, and German Jewish father, Emil, a relationship that began in pre-Nazi Germany and lasted until Emil’s death in 1980. As Romero recounts in her intro, she learned details about her parents’ liaison when she was house-sitting for her mom and discovered letters that documented their seven-year wartime separation.

The book, part political and part social history, covers the growth of Nazism in Europe. But this is also a highly personal story: Deta’s 1937 emigration to England and her subsequent work as a nanny were acts of anti-Hitler resistance. Nonetheless, as a German citizen, her loyalties were questioned and she was imprisoned as an “enemy alien.”

Emil’s story – his emigration to the US and his work as a photographer in Hanover, New Hampshire – both lucky breaks, offers additional insights into who got out of Germany and why. Still, there is tragedy here; although Emil and Deta reunited in 1946, he was unable to get his parents, sister, or brother-in-law out of Germany, a reality that cast an ever-present pall on his relationships and business dealings.

All told, All for You not only documents an enduring, if troubled, love, but offers insights into trauma and survival.

All for You by Dena Rueb Romero. She Writes Press, May 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.