"The German Bride" by Joanna Hershon (320 pages, Ballantine)
Rising from her makeshift bed in a porcelain bathtub, Eva Frank pulls aside the flap at the back of the covered wagon to find her husband and guide sleeping among the bodies of three slaughtered men: two scalped, one burned alive.
To escape Comanches the night before, her party had driven into the night, unwittingly choosing this part of the otherwise pristine prairie as its resting spot.
The scene is typical of Joanna Hershon’s third novel, "The German Bride," in which violence bulldozes its way through scenes of poignant beauty.
The episode opens Eva’s eyes to the seriousness of her decision to leave her comfortable home in Berlin for the wild New World. During the rest of the trip on the Santa Fe Trail, fear blinds her to the splendor of the West, and eats away at her peace of mind.
At its core, "The German Bride" is about one woman’s fight to reconcile her scandalous past and escape her guilt. But on a larger scale, the novel successfully conveys the trials of German Jewish immigrants who, in the 19th century, forwent the bustle of New York City, choosing instead to travel westward to Santa Fe.
Eva is the youngest daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker. Her tranquil life in Berlin disintegrates when she falls in love with Heinrich, a non-Jewish artist commissioned to paint the portraits of her and her sister, Henriette.
They begin having an affair, which continues undiscovered for some time until Henriette — married and pregnant — discovers the interfaith lovebirds. The shock induces her to go into premature labor. Before sunrise she and her infant are dead.
Feeling responsible for her sister’s death, Eva decides she must leave Berlin in order to overcome her crippling guilt. She accepts the marriage proposal of Abraham Shein, an ambitious merchant who runs a company in Santa Fe with his brother and, after 10 years abroad, had returned to Germany in search of a wife.
They cross the Atlantic by boat, pass through New York, take a train to St. Louis and board a ferry that deposits them on the Santa Fe Trail. The rest of their journey through this alien land is made in two rickety wagons, with a lone guide to accompany them.
Life in Santa Fe is rife with contradiction and contrast. It is the formal dining room table set on Eva and Abraham’s dirt floor. It is practicing Jewish ritual in lawless Santa Fe. It is the absurdity of seeking dignity and routine in a town where donkeys wander aimlessly, trailing stench behind them.
Eva’s new life toughens her, but her guilt over Henriette’s death stunts her relationships with others. She shuts herself off from the intimacy of the life she left behind.
The suffering in "The German Bride" can be frustrating. The endless stink of Santa Fe permeates everything: homes, beds, behaviors. One feels compelled to grab Eva by the shoulders and shake her out of her listless stupor.
Her husband makes her life no easier. Alcohol fuels Abraham’s gambling habits and adulterous tendencies, and he buries himself under a growing mountain of debt. In turn, he consistently reneges on his promises to Eva.
Hershon’s lyrical, assured prose raises the book from the ranks of pedestrian literature to something more profound.
She writes, "The last living rose of this terrible hot summer dropped so low to the ground that Eva almost took it upon herself to chop off its withering head."
Too morbid for beach reading? Perhaps. But the writing is visceral and sharp, whimsical and imaginative. It brings us back in time to another world.
Though the relationships and themes are wearisome, Hershon captures the uncertainty and complexity that mark any marriage, and explores the blurry fog of emotion behind all relationships. She paints characters that are as human as the landscape is wild.
The result is oddly comforting.
Hershon truly understands the inner-workings of the human mind and heart. She handles her characters’ humanity with rare empathy, and withholds judgment, leaving that task to the reader — if he or she so chooses to indulge.