On Thursday, 12/19/19, Open Road will have an e-book promotion for Time No Longer. The following day, there will be a promotion for The Wide House. The prices for both days will be $1.99. At the bottom of the newsletter, I will put the link for getting the promotion price of each book. You must use the link on the appropriate day. In this newsletter I will primarily concentrate on the first book. I have not ever tried any audio books, and maybe you haven't either. We thought we would do a promotion on Time No Longer, one of Taylor Caldwell's most successful attempts at a resonant theme for her:
What does the presence of evil do to people?
The year is 1933, and the evil is the rise of Hitler. In the US during the middle of the 1930s there are reports on the Gestapo, Hitler's secret police, infiltrators of the lives of ordinary Germans, and the first instigators of the holocaust. TC published this novel in 1941; it was put into type before the US had entered the war. The remainder of this newsletter will consist of two parts.

A description of the feeling of the growing evil embodied in the New Germany
A discussion of the promo codes for downloading the audio of the novel for free.

Time No Longer
TC's first published novel, Dynasty of Death appeared in 1938. This, appearing in 1941, was her 3rd. The Holocaust literature is so large, there is no guessing what has or has not been covered.

The simplest description of "Time No Longer" is that it is an explanation of how evil will overwhelm almost anyone. It opens with a symbol of evil so blatant, that it could have appeared in a Steven King novel: The face of Gilu, a shunken voodoo head brought back from voodoo besotted Africa, by the Jewish foster brother Eric of the family of twins Kurt and Karl.

The shrunken head never leaves the story. It's presence throbs through every action of this aryan family driven mad by their experience of Nazi cruelty.

The first chapter is entirely about "the Jewish Question." TC displays that through the diametrically opposed views of twin brothers Karl and Kurt.

It appeared before Americans understood the holocaust and the full extent of Nazi Germany. It opens with the family view on the hell that had become Germany.

The underpinning research likely was performed by TC's husband, Marcus Reback. I imagine he read things from William Shirer, but long before Shirer wrote "The Nightmare Years." Even before he wrote "The Berlin Diaries." Mr. Reback would have cared greatly about it. Certainly he would have pushed TC's ability to write quickly to get ahead of the journalism on the maelstrom in Europe at that time.

TC sees evil in terms Nathaniel Hawthorne might have expressed as a mass hysteria that overwhelmed the pilgrims though that doesn't explain it – while she sees evil as "EVIL" incarnate. The symbol is clearly seen as a model for the evil of Nazism.

It is her view of Nazi Germany before Kristallnacht, though after William Shirer's "Report from Berlin." TC never appears to document her sources. Likely she had not read this report, though she had to have seen many of his dispatches from Berlin. They started in the early 1930s.

Still, in this novel, the heroine is Therese, and the gender balance of heroisms between men and women is notable. Except that Shirer's "The Nightmare Years" was so depressing, and that this was, too, I found a center for TC:
Her attempt to label evil, one that went astray later, is much more commendable here.
A family review in more detail of the novel appears here.

One of the TC fans with whom I communicate said the following.

My dad read "Report From Berlin" and other William Shirer books long ago. I remember Shirer quite well. He spent the 1930's traveling through Eastern Europe and witnessed the frightening political changes.

Somerset Maugham also wrote about the rise of Nazi Germany in the late 1930's, before America entered the war.

It is notable, with TC's eventual vehement anti-communism, that the John Birch Society didn't come into official existence until 1958. Still, her first novel, "Dynasty of Death," features many conspiracy beliefs that the Birchers later exploited and heavily publicized.

One characteristic of some conservatives is their belief in an abstract evil, to the extent, when they define something as good, they precede it with an evil contrast to the good. Seems they can't have 'good' without a strong contrasting 'evil.'

Time No Longer Audio Promo codes
Here is the link to audible.com's offering of the Time No Longer: A Novel (Unabridged) audible files.

Our intention is to hand out six of the promo codes, each of which entitles the person who uses it to a free copy of the audible.com discs of the novel. To have a chance to get one of these codes, respond with your request to this e-mail when you have decided you want one.

If you are among the first six doing so I will send you the code and instructions for using it. The instructions are quite simple. I'll be interested in how it works for you.

On Thursday, December 19, the Open Road promotion of Time No Longer will be available here. On Friday, December 20, you will find the promotion for The Wide House at the same link.

Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell

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The sign-up for the TC-Descendants Newsletter is here.