Claudia Keenan

“Pioneering the Vote:” The Plural Histories of Women’s Suffrage

Five years ago, looking ahead to the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States, Neylan McBaine embarked on a story that has been largely neglected. In her new book, Pioneering the Vote, The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West (Shadow Mountain), she examines the tangled history…

Claudia KeenanAugust 4, 2020

Book Club Network Book Club Network - Featured2 Fiction

Fiona Davis’s “The Lions of Fifth Avenue:” A New York City Mystery of History

In the world’s fastest growing city, where well over a dozen daily newspapers were read by more than five million people, the year 1914 burst forth with the Great War and battles over modernism and women’s rights. While immigrants lived in stifling squalor on the Lower East Side, the lingering…

Claudia KeenanJuly 21, 2020

Fiction

The Night Watchman: A Mid-Century Tale of Native American Determination

The granddaughter of a Chippewa leader who challenged the U.S. Government’s policies toward Native Americans, Louise Erdrich has long written about the bitter history of twentieth-century American Indian culture. In The Night Watchman (Harper Collins Publishers), she returns to the themes of love and death that have haunted her work.…

Claudia KeenanMarch 2, 2020

Fiction

In Alice Hoffman’s New Novel, a Girl and a Golem Run From Nazis

On page one of her terrific new novel, The World That We Knew (Simon and Schuster), Alice Hoffman sets a chilling scene: It is Berlin in the spring of 1941, where the clear-eyed Hanni Kohn is focused solely on saving her twelve-year old daughter Lea from the Nazis. While the…

Claudia KeenanSeptember 24, 2019

Fiction

Pursuing the Dragon Lady in Italy, London and Rhodesia

Louisa Treger's The Dragon Lady (Bloomsbury) offers a nuanced perspective on British and African cultures during precarious times, the 1920s through the 1950s. It’s a wonderful mystery, love story and odyssey, all rolled into one. What's even more incredible is that this story is based on a real person. Yes,…

Claudia KeenanAugust 13, 2019

Fiction

True Friendship Never Fades in Fiona Davis’ Latest

In Fiona Davis' The Chelsea Girls (Dutton), the shy cerebral Hazel Ripley and flamboyant Maxine Mead are thrown together for a USO performance in Naples, Italy, during World War II. They hate each other at first sight. Maxine regularly brings down the house while Hazel, whose reputation as a perpetual…

Claudia KeenanJuly 31, 2019

Fiction

A Frenzied World of Fashion and Foreboding

It is a writer’s challenge to conjure those well-documented years sans clichés, to share a new story about a shocking time when German soldiers were increasingly glimpsed along the cobblestone streets and in the bars of the fanciest hotels. Parisians went about their business, but few lives were unaffected. Many…

Claudia KeenanJuly 10, 2019

Book Club Network Fiction

“The Masterpiece:” NYC’s Grand Central as One of the Stars

Today Fiona Davis' own narrative work of art, The Masterpiece (Dutton) comes out in paperback. To celebrate, we revisit the intricate story and informative interview with the author. Today’s radiant Grand Central Terminal belies the nadir of its seventh decade when decay, crime, and overreaching developers threatened its existence. Thanks…

Claudia KeenanJuly 8, 2019

Fiction

Life, Love & Loss at the Dead Letter Depot

Lost letters have been around since the very beginning of correspondence. Illegible writing, no forwarding address: what happens to such missives? Historically, post offices have hired smart, trustworthy, kindly people who spend their days trying to track down senders and recipients. They function as detectives, really. Often their work involves…

Claudia KeenanJune 4, 2019

Author Spotlight Book Club Network Fiction

Amy Meyerson’s Tempest in a California Bookshop

A romance, a quest, and a literary adventure, Amy Meyerson’s debut novel The Bookshop of Yesterdays (Park Row) introduces a young woman in furious pursuit of the past. In the novel, just released in paperback, Miranda Brooks, named for the heroine of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, is a history teacher…

Claudia KeenanMay 7, 2019

Fiction

Take a Jitney Ride to a Drama Set in the Elegant Hamptons

Summertime in Sag Harbor – the boats knock against the docks, the air is salt and the season is sunshine. If you love art and books with glamorous settings, Drawing Home is the perfect summer read. Sag Harbor locals are accustomed to tourists and summer people. But in Jamie Brenner's…

Claudia KeenanMay 3, 2019

Nonfiction

Modernism, Madness and the American Dream

During the early 1980s, when Tom Weidlinger, author of The Restless Hungarian: Modernism, Madness, and the American Dream (SparkPress), set out to plumb his father’s life, he already possessed a sheaf of astonishing stories. First and foremost, he knew that Paul Weidlinger counted among the towering figures in twentieth-century engineering,…

Claudia KeenanApril 16, 2019

Nonfiction

A DNA Revelation: Mystery & Turmoil in Dani Shapiro’s Latest

Often it is a shocking revelation: the discovery that one’s heredity is not what one assumed; not what was accepted as fact. Dani Shapiro’s new memoir, Inheritance (Knopf), illuminates the feelings and issues that come along with uncovering family secrets and upending settled truth. Shapiro was puzzled but didn’t give it much thought…

Claudia KeenanFebruary 4, 2019

Fiction

The Wartime Sisters in Need of a Peace Talk

It’s Brooklyn in the early thirties, and Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan have brought forth two daughters who could not possibly be more opposite from each other. Ruth is studious, brittle and envious of her younger sister, Millie, whose beauty and charm captivate everyone around her. Even as a child, Millie…

Claudia KeenanJanuary 7, 2019

Fiction

A Gorgeous Distraction in Time of Turmoil

In 1947, the world set its weary eyes on a royal wedding when Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten. The war had ended just two years earlier, and the British were still living in hard times, with food and gas rationing and insufficient housing. And so, as winter approached, the prospect…

Claudia KeenanDecember 19, 2018

Book Club Network Fiction

“The Only Woman in the Room:” Enter the Wild World of Actress Hedy Lamarr

An actress, inventor, and keeper of secrets, the beautiful Hedy Lamarr was among many Jews who fled Europe during the 1930s and came to Hollywood to start a new life. Born in Vienna in 1914, she studied acting with the innovative theater director, Max Reinhardt. But she made the mistake…

Claudia KeenanOctober 24, 2018

Claudia Keenan

“Pioneering the Vote:” The Plural Histories of Women’s Suffrage

Fiona Davis’s “The Lions of Fifth Avenue:” A New York City Mystery of History

The Night Watchman: A Mid-Century Tale of Native American Determination

In Alice Hoffman’s New Novel, a Girl and a Golem Run From Nazis

Pursuing the Dragon Lady in Italy, London and Rhodesia

True Friendship Never Fades in Fiona Davis’ Latest

A Frenzied World of Fashion and Foreboding

“The Masterpiece:” NYC’s Grand Central as One of the Stars

Life, Love & Loss at the Dead Letter Depot

Amy Meyerson’s Tempest in a California Bookshop

Take a Jitney Ride to a Drama Set in the Elegant Hamptons

Modernism, Madness and the American Dream

A DNA Revelation: Mystery & Turmoil in Dani Shapiro’s Latest

The Wartime Sisters in Need of a Peace Talk

A Gorgeous Distraction in Time of Turmoil

“The Only Woman in the Room:” Enter the Wild World of Actress Hedy Lamarr

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