One of Taylor Caldwell's major devices – rarely absent in her novels – was the creation of symbols of evil, and the palpable effect of those symbols on her characters. The first I recognized that clearly was in the Open Road novel featured today: Time No Longer.
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. This newsletter will consist of two parts.
A description of the feeling of the growing evil embodied in the New Germany
The actual Open Road sale. The family still has promo codes for a free copy of the audio version of the book. If you would like to get such a code, please tell me.
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.
Time No Longer
By Taylor Caldwell
$2.99 $17.99
EXPIRES 6/3/20
Historical Fiction
#1 New York Times bestselling author
On the eve of World War II, twin brothers are divided both by their allegiances—and by the brutal murder of a German Jew.
“It flashes like a bolt of lightning...Devastating.” —San Francisco Chronicle