[starred] KIRKUS

At once lyrical and heartbreaking, Hershon’s third novel (Swimming, 2001, etc.) follows a young Jewish bride as she leaves the refinement of Berlin for the wilds of 1860s Santa Fe.
Eva Frank’s journey doesn’t begin on the boat to America. Her real story originates a few years earlier when she and older sister Henriette sit for Heinrich, a painter commissioned to create their portraits. Eva is drawn to him despite his blandly anti-Semitic sentiments (he assures her that if they marry no one will suspect she’s a Jew), and their association leads (or so Eva blames herself) to the death of her beloved sister during childbirth. Abraham Shein, in Germany to find a bride, woos young Eva, or at least offers her an opportunity for escape, or atonement, or self-abasement—something to take her away from paralyzing guilt. The aptly named Abraham is a large, forceful figure, full of charm and bluster and owner of a thriving mercantile business in Santa Fe. He promises her the moon (in the form of an elegant home to display her wedding china and linen), but after the arduous trip across the plains, she arrives at a small, dark adobe house. Hershon creates a finely nuanced portrait of their marriage—Eva, politely contemptuous of the state in which she’s forced to live, Abraham, glib, guilty and self-righteous, and yet the two love, or at least desperately need the other. As Eva suffers a number of failed pregnancies, Abraham becomes more indebted to the gambling table and local bordello, and their downfall is imminent. Hershon’s large cast of supporting players—Santa Fe’s French bishop and his grimacing flock of nuns, the other German Jewish merchants prospering and creating a community—and her graceful description of the desert form a narrative of outsiders pitted against a giant landscape. Amidst it all stands little Eva, determined to make a life for herself.
A beautifully written tale of small sufferings and redemptions.

Santa Fe New Mexican 05/09/08

 By Tomas Jaehn   

...Hershon's narrative revealed itself as a tragic yet striking
odyssey of a young woman's development and experience in a far-away place.
 The story begins in Germany, the land of Dichter und Denker, or poets and
thinkers (and at least one painter), in 1861. Young Eva Frank, a Jewish girl,
and her sister, Henrietta, live a privileged life filled with German Kultur -
its music, literature (Heinrich Heine is their favorite poet), and fine arts.
When a charming artist is commissioned to paint their portraits, their lives
are disrupted as Eva participates with him in a secret liaison.
 The affair between this Gentile artist and Jewish woman is doomed from the
outset because of the harsh limitations of Jewish life in Germany, hidden
behind the facade of enlightenment and culture.
 Reminded often that "there is no shame in being Jewish," Eva is certain
that she "cannot be free as a German without also being free as a Jew."... Eva, agitated and feeling responsible for whatever tragedy might ensue, hastily enters into a marriage with Abraham
Shein, a German merchant making a visit from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
 Thus begins Eva's long journey to Santa Fe.
 ... with an "unfulfilled desire for a few drops of laudanum or at least a glass of beer," Eva arrives in Santa Fe andrecognizes that it is nothing like her husband's description...The German Bride is a graceful tale of a woman dealing with personal,religious, and circumstantial difficulties. In this narrative - quite often sad, if not disturbing, and at times mystifying - Hershon's vivid style
evokes the details of daily life in a small town with little Kultur. Her
vibrant descriptions of mundane events, frequently using words of the period
( portmanteau and phrenologist, to name two), make this book a page turner.
Finely crafted sentences, sometimes almost reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's
wordplay, gracefully describe the vast Southwestern landscape along the Santa
Fe Trail.  Hershon's descriptive style effectively conveys Santa Fe's cultural and
physical landscape and the formative impact they have on Eva. As her husband
points out, here "you can be as German as you think you are, not as German as
Germany will allow" - an observation that reflects the reality of German
immigrants in the Southwest.
 In crafting Eva's journey, the author evokes, either knowingly or
unknowingly, a segment of Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" (now
largely discredited), which suggested that life on the fringes of
civilization made a person stronger and eventually a better American... It is certainly worthwhile to
follow this German bride's journey in Hershon's enjoyable novel.

  "Joanna Hershon's new book, The German Bride, is a surprising novel of grace and refinement. It is a tale of the American West, but unlike any I have ever read before. She enters Willa Cather territory and does it with a rare elegance and complete originality. I was not familiar with Joanna Hershon's work when I read this novel and it made me order her first two books."

––Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides


The German Bride, Joanna Hershon's lush and gripping novel of  travel and dislocation, exquisitely delineates the shock and loss that accompanied the wild ride of immigration and frontier living in the mid-19th century.  Eva Shein's heart-in-the-throat journey, from Germany to Santa Fe and then further westward, is an elegant and mesmerizing testament to human adaptability and survival."

––Helen Schulman, author of A Day At The Beach


The German Bride is a novel of great breadth and depth, a richly imagined pilgrimage into this brave new world.  Joanna Hershon paints the portrait  of a woman––and her family and suitors, the strange company she comes to keep––with authoritative precision; hers is a first-rate talent and here is a riveting read.

––Nicholas Delbanco, author of Spring and Fall


“Wonderful from start to finish. An immigrant tale and a Western, without the Lower East Side or cowboys. I don't know why nobody has told such a story before, but I'm glad Joanna Hershon has told it first and told it so well.”

––Mary Doria Russell, author of A Thread of Grace