Pub Date 08 Jun 2021 St. Martin’s Press Hardcover, 320 pages Anne Sebba
My Review
This is a nonfiction book and by the way it’s presented we can tell Ethel Rosenberg’s life has been meticulously researched by author Anne Sebba.
In June 1953, married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who had two young sons were led separately from their cells on death row and electrocuted just moments apart. As they were being led to the chair they did not cry out or fight it they went calmly.
We see Ethel’s life as it unfolds for her as a child and teen and feel the coldness of her mother’s betrayal and rejection. She didn’t want her. One thing was very clear, how much Ethel adored her children. It was interesting reading the details of her trial for espionage-related crimes, of which I didn’t see any hard evidence presented. Because of deep love for her husband Julius, she refused to say anything negative against him in court essentially courageously facing the death penalty which left her children orphans after her execution.
Eyeopening tragedy!
Pub Date 08 Jun 2021
I was given a complimentary copy of this book. Thank you.
All opinions expressed are my own.
GoodReads Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba’s moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world.
In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother.
This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple for more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950’s. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn’t committed, orphaning her children.
Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel’s story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.
About The Author
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Thank you for visiting my author page. It’s a great opportunity to be in touch with my readers, to hear your response to my books and to say thank you for your support and interest. I really appreciate feedback so do please get in touch via twitter @annesebba or via my website http://www.annesebba.com.
I was born in London and went to London University where I read History, specialising in 20th century French History. I then lived in Rome where I worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters followed by a couple of years in New York, where I started my freelance career.
I have written nine non- fiction books for adults since then mostly biographies of iconic women such as Mother Teresa, Laura Ashley and Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Wife. In 2011, I published That Woman a life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor based on a hidden archive of letters that I discovered in an attic and in 2016 Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940’s (Weidenfeld & Nicolson UK )or Les Parisiennes How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation according to the US version. (St Martin’s Press US) It was described as ‘fascinating and beautifully written’ by the Spectator. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/keeping-up-appearances-in-1940s-paris/
I am thrilled finally to be writing about France in the 1940s after all those years when I studied it at University. I hope you find it a fascinating story too.
Thank you for visiting today. Do you read much nonfiction? Let me know in the comments if this sounds like a book you’d enjoy reading.
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