Ledicia’s Key
Ledicia’s Key, Yvette Nachmias-Baeu’s fourth book, is a genealogical puzzle that pieces clues and follows generations of a family from the Spanish Inquisition to present-day New England. The author reaches backwards and forwards through history to highlight descendants from Generals to artists, from nobility to shopkeepers. Here is a symphony of diverse humanity, of love and war, and not always harmonious - played out in the sharps and flats of personal triumphs and political tragedies.
Best Friends
It is a book of letters that tells the story of two aspiring young women, Beth and Yvette whose correspondence span a period of twenty-seven years--from San Francisco to a return to their roots in New York in the sixties, where they are involved in the Downtown art and political scene of the time, encountering and befriending people like; Bob Dylan, Dustin Hoffman, Shel Silverstein, Phil Ochs, Sam Shepard, Anna Halperin, Timothy Leary, Andre Gregory, Spaulding Gray, Eli Seigel, Andy Warhol, et al, and ends during the eighties when their lives spun off into widely divergent paths, one of them tragically.
A reluctant Life
This is not a mawkish uplift. The insights are striking and the prose is accessible, luminous and stark. Though the book is dedicated to the husband she lost, the author might have written it for all loving wives who've had to travel the same path, through the mapless maze of grief and finally into recovery. Anyone who has gone or is going through a similar experience will not merely read, but recognize this book.