Summary:
In this stunning new historical novel
inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a
woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor
who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a New York City Jewish
orphanage years before.
In
1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in
a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes,
Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where
Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray
treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment
from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado
hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she
had.
Though
Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she
is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old
Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken
Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and
pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old
doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a
person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in
stone.
Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a
powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make
that can shape our destinies.
Purchase
the book at:
About the Author:
Kim van Alkemade is the author of the historical fiction
novel Orphan #8 (William Morrow August 4, 2015). Her creative nonfiction
essays have appeared in literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, CutBank,
and So To Speak. Born in New
York, NY, she earned a BA in English and History from the University of
Wisconsin-Parkside and an MA and PhD in English from the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a Professor in the English Department at
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania where she teaches writing. She lives in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
She spent eight years researching and writing Orphan #8. It all began with her interest in the Hebrew
Orphan Asylum of New York, the institution in which her grandfather, Victor
Berger, and his brothers, Charlie and Seymour, grew up. Her great grandmother,
Fannie Berger, worked at the orphanage, first as a domestic and later as a counselor.
Many of the characters and events in Orphan #8 were inspired
by her family history.
Connect
with the author at:
WilliamMorrow Paperbacks is
giving one lucky winner a print copy of
Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade
US only
