Meeting a Business Rival and Future Lover

In my historical novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to create a scene that would show the tempestuous nature of Deborah's first meeting with David Holtz, whose family has long held grudges against the Kronengolds and who wants to take over the same company Deborah is intent on taking over; I wanted to show, too, how well-matched they are and how attracted they are to each other. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

He appeared angry. "Three or four weeks from now, we would have been ready to go after Columbiana ourselves."

"Which means you aren't ready now." Deborah tried to probe further. "Why do you want an insurance company anyway? Stodgy business."

"The same reason you do, I think." His anger was subdued now, she could see, a negotiating stance he called on when needed.

She feigned ignorance. "What's that?"

"Its cash reserves."

They both smiled, sensing in the other a match to their skills. Each was impressed differently, however. David was thrown off guard because her beauty concealed a formidable mind; he wasn't used to that in the many women he had easily, almost thoughtlessly, conquered.

After a long time without an interest in a man, Deborah felt more surprise than elation at her very strong attraction to David Holtz. She usually rejected within a few minutes after meeting nearly all the young men with whom she came into contact. But David Holtz, with the energy and the agile mind of a self-made man, had a toughness that matched hers; she had been unable to make him yield an inch. Deborah shook herself. Such thinking was crazy at a time like this—and about a man who threatened to topple everything she was trying to build.
"You and your father seem to have come a long way," Deborah said, assuming that he would want to tell her more.

"Not bad. Nowhere near what the Kronengolds are worth, but we're getting there." He paused, the bantering negotiating tone dropped for the moment. "It must be a great feeling to be born with all of this—to know it's yours and no one can take it away from you."

"Yes, it must be." David failed to note the irony in her words.

"Be honest with me," he asked. "What is a young, damned good-looking Englishwoman doing in a jungle like American investment banking? It's rough enough for men."

"To put it in a sentence," Deborah answered as honestly as she dared, "America is a country where anyone, even a young woman, can become wealthy and successful on her own. Even if she's a Kronengold."

The two stared at each other for several seconds, each assessing the strength and commitment of the other to a fight over Columbiana.

David was the first to speak. "Regardless of whether the Kronengolds are up against us, I'll put everything on the line to acquire Columbiana. We're ready to make an offer to pay ten dollars a share above your offer."

But Deborah thought she heard more in his voice than tenacity. She thought she could make out the merest hint of bluff.

"Are you sure this is the right battle to pick with the Kronengolds?" Deborah asked, her own tone a challenge.

"Am I picking a battle with the family or only with you?" he wondered aloud.
That was a question she could not let him ponder.

"Are you prepared to try to find out?" She let a smile play over her face. "Besides, I think you're too good a businessman to raise the stakes of the game to the point where the prize is no longer worth the struggle— for the winner or the loser. Don't forget, I already own about ten percent of Columbiana's stock through exercising warrants. I have to buy only another forty percent. You have to convince shareholders owning fifty percent to sell to you. The odds favor me."

She thought she could sense that he was struggling, hating to yield such a fat prize, yet fearing the consequences of a battle and all the while concerned that he might be cutting himself off from her. Now was the time to offer him a different prize.

"David, rather than scrapping over this company, to no one's benefit, let us find you another insurance company with excess cash in the reserves, a bigger one that's really worth your going after. We're investment bankers. It stands to reason that if we could do it for ourselves, we can do it for our clients."
"I've had enough of small investment banks. We have an appointment tomorrow with Landy at Hazelton, Lieb."

"Van Landy can't tie his shoelaces without help. I'll make you an offer you can't ignore. To show you how good we are, I'll find you that big insurance company and, when I do, charge you only half the usual fee."
He had not been diverted. "I still want Columbiana."

"Fight and all?"

He paused an instant. "I ought to warn you. I usually get what I want. How about dinner tonight?"

She shook her head and stood up. "Not while we're adversaries."
"When?"

"That's up to you."

Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). 

How the Wealthy Nobility Cover Up Scandals

I’ve written a number of novels including A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle); andDeeds or Deeds (Kindle); and Stalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). In my historical novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to show how Rob Rowell, a wealthy earl, could cajole a nurse into covering up his part in the car-accident death of his illicit lover, the mother of my protagonist, Deborah Kronenegold. Here’s an excerpt: Rob Rowell did not see the curve in the road. Or, until it was too late, the large truck with the snowplow snout that suddenly loomed up in front of them. He twisted the steering wheel and braked. The car careered to the right in a skidding spin. Madeleine’s door smashed against the side edge of the plow. The hardened steel cut through the Rolls like a knife and crushed Madeleine’s body. The hospital was very near, but Rob, cradling her in a blanket in the truck cab, knew that it did not matter. Although attendants and nurses wheeled her quickly toward an operating room, and doctors alongside hurriedly covered her face with an oxygen mask, injected chemicals into her, inserted in her arms tubes connected to bottles of blood, pressed frantically on her dented-in chest—Rob knew he was watching a futile dumb show performed out of habit. She had left him already, amid the swirling whiteness. His small suitcase beside him, Rob sat docilely on the bench in the emergency room, trying to come to grips with the finality of what had happened. The moments with her had always seemed luminous, because she was luminous—fresh and spontaneous and always so alive. He tried to summon up vivid recollections of her, so as to hold onto her and to delay his acceptance of the inalterability of her death, but all he could visualize was the angel-perfect profile resting against the black half-moon of steel that had sliced through the white Rolls. Even in his distraught condition, he could not evade the knowledge that he had been the cause of her death, but he assured himself that no one could hold him responsible; with weather conditions so deplorable, it was true only in the technical sense that he had been at the wheel. He sat up straight. At the wheel! If the police found out that he and Madeleine de Kronengold had been together in a car traveling back from her country house, the reporters would learn about their affair as well. Lurid stories would smear the two of them across every newspaper in England. There might even be speculation as to whether there had been some negligence involved in the accident. The publicity would be ghastly for him, for Maddy’s family, and especially for the Rowell bank, which was shaky right now as it was. And it would all be quite unnecessary. She was dead, and none of this would bring her back; if it could, he told himself, he would gladly endure it all. At that moment a nurse approached him diffidently, carrying the forms that would have to be filled out. She appeared to be young and unsure of herself. He gave her a sad but engaging smile. Yes, he was sufficiently recovered to answer some questions for the hospital’s records. He took her hand so she could not write, gazed into her eyes, and began to relate a tragic story of love found and lost, a poignant affair between two members of the nobility, one a prominent banker, the other a married woman from a prominent banking family. After a while he confided how much being able to tell her about his loss comforted him. And later he explained that it would be so much kinder to the dead woman’s family to leave his name out of the reports. He had been in the back seat asleep when it happened, he told her. He supposed the force of the skid had thrown her across the front seat, to the other side of the car, where the crash killed her. Under those circumstances it wasn’t absolutely necessary to write down that he was also in the car, was it? For the sake of the woman’s grieving husband and children, he would be eternally grateful to her if she spared them by leaving his name out of the reports. They’ve already suffered so much. He pointed to a newspaper front page announcing Samuel’s death. Someone had left it on a chair. She withdrew her hand from his and fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. She nodded. She would do it. The answering thankfulness on his face was authentic; if her report raised no questions, no one would look further into the matter. He took her phone number; he would like to be able to thank her properly some time very soon. Dabbing her eyes, she smiled and began to write her report. Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle).

Spain's Expulsion of the Jews in 1492

I’ve written a number of novels including A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle); and Deeds or Deeds (Kindle); and Stalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). 

In my historical novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to show how in 1492 the Christian monarchs of Spain forced their Jewish citizens to leave Spain, threatening them with death if they remained. The fictional Kronengolds' and my own ancestors were among them. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

As [Samuel's yacht] the Venture approached Malaga, reminiscences were flooding Samuel, seemingly to make up for a lifetime of never looking back. That morning he signed contracts for the land on the Costa del Sol and then drove with Deborah to Granada and the Alhambra, the magnificent Moorish palace he had not visited in fifty years.

Many memories came to him there beneath the slim columns and elegant friezes pierced by light into lace.

"We are originally Sephardic Jews, Spanish Jews," Samuel said to his granddaughter as they stood at the end of the reflecting pool in the Court of the Alberca. "The Christians forced the last of the Arabs and Jews out of Spain the same year Columbus found the New World. In this very place a woman once told me that Columbus may have been a Jew seeking a homeland for his people, that the evidence is rumored to be hidden in the Vatican. ‘Colon,’ his real name, is a Sephardic Jewish name." He described the Spanish Inquisition, how Jews were tortured by the Christians and killed in the name of God.

"Like Columbus, our family had sailed from Spain by then. We have a knack for that, thank God! They had gone to Florence, where their skill as goldsmiths could provide a living."

Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). Stalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle):  Deeds or Deeds (Kindle); and Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle).

What America Was Like in 1963

Birthright or Birthright (Kindle) I’ve written a number of novels including A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle); and Deeds or Deeds (Kindle); andStalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). In my historical novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to show what was happening in America when Deborah de Kronengold arrived and how it affected her. Here’s an excerpt: THE OVERWHELMING PREPONDERANCE of Americans in 1963 believed devoutly in the democracy, capitalism, and technology that had brought prosperity, the good life—or at least, a progressively better life—to all of them. They believed in change, which had become almost a constant, and the capacity of the nation’s institutions to absorb the bombardment of the new and still remain solid. They believed in their global mission to contain the Communist menace and to spread selflessly their abundance and freedom. They believed in their young, vigorous president, who held these beliefs up before them as a standard they could march behind, who was strong enough to force the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba and still secure enough to sign a nuclear-test-ban treaty with that country. They believed, almost as devoutly as the Establishment coterie that held the foreign policy reins, that the time had come for America to take over for Britain as the moral leader and military policeman of the world. They believed in the promise of America. They believed in themselves. On September 26, 1963, the day Deborah arrived in New York, The New York Times reported that two bombs had been detonated in a Negro Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama, eleven days after four girls were killed there in a similar incident, and that twenty-eight Negroes were arrested in Selma, Alabama, for demonstrating in front of the courthouse. On the foreign front, the Times quoted a defense official, who was on a survey of the military situation in South Vietnam with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Joint Chiefs of Staff head General Maxwell Taylor, as saying that "military events in Vietnam" were "getting better and better, rather than worse and worse"; the point was rapidly being approached where "the goals set will be reached relatively shortly." For most Americans in 1963, Vietnam was merely a minor squabble half a world away, the purview of the military boys and diplomats, who knew far more than they. And the Negroes? Now that the problem had been pointed out, civil rights legislation would solve it. After all, this was America, the land of prosperity, of goodness, of ever growing perfectibility, one and united, now and forever, its good crowned by God with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. Deborah de Kronengold stood on the steps of Federal Hall beneath the commanding, oversized statue of George Washington, who had taken the presidential oath of office here. Churning with people, Wall Street bisected the skyscraper canyon like a turbulent river rushing at her feet. The taxi driver had suggested a modest hotel in a respectable neighborhood and then driven her to the financial district, as she requested. The taxi fare was a wild extravagance, given her meager resources, but she was impatient to find a job and begin her new life. She detected little beauty in the facades of the buildings on either side of Wall or Broad streets. The beauty was in the buildings’ massiveness, the walls thick and strong to contain all the energy crackling within them, all the ambition. Here, she sensed, was a country unembarrassed by ambition, nurturing energy. Here was a country for dreaming as high and as far as talent and determination could reach, to the stars and beyond. Here was a country endowed with the possibility of choice. And if the choice was to amass riches and one pursued that choice ferociously, single-mindedly, forsaking all others, every waking moment applied relentlessly to that end, every sleeping moment a grudging delay, here was a country where riches could still be won. That was Deborah’s goal: wealth so great that she need never rely on another human being again—for anything. When that goal was finally reached, there would be no doubt who she was. Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). Stalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time(Kindle); and Deeds or Deeds (Kindle).

At Oxford Meeting A First Lover

In my historical novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to show how in Deborah's early days at Oxford she comes back into contact with Rob Rowell, the son of the man she knew to be her mother's lover. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

Deborah de Kronengold walked grimly along the High Street, barely exchanging a word with the shorter young woman beside her. They shared Miss Davis’s tutorial on the history of economics and had not found a single matter on which they agreed since the term had started. Deborah had grown to her full five feet seven inches in height. Her red hair had lost none of its sunrise brightness and was still worn long and straight. She had finely fashioned features, a classic beauty that would have aroused admiration in any age, but today her chin thrust forward belligerently and her blue eyes glared in anger. The young woman who strode just as angrily beside her was Gladys Wood. Brown hair cut to utilitarian shortness, small, pretty face aggressively makeup-free, brow perpetually furrowed to match the disapproving line into which her mouth was drawn, Gladys Wood was a firmly committed Marxist. Deborah, of course, by both birth and inclination, was just as firmly committed a capitalist. Today Miss Davis had surprised them both by telling them they were very much alike; she had enjoyed their wrangles, but the debate was now tending to slip from the academic to the personal. She requested they follow the ancient tradition of no work in the afternoon and do something frivolous together for a change. "Like join the Bell Ringers Society?" Deborah had asked with some asperity, displeased at the prospect of having to socialize with the doctrinaire fanatic with whom she shared the tutorial.

Upon learning that neither of these overly serious young women had so much as taken a meal out of hall since arriving at Prinsworth, Miss Davis had ordered them to spend the next week pursuing a social life—together. As a start they were to go out to lunch at a restaurant that very day.

Looking into the window of the restaurant, which had stood on that spot for hundreds of years, they both hesitated. Nearly all the tables were surrounded by male students.

"Looks intimidating," Gladys breathed quietly.

"Rather."

The women glanced at each other for support, then grinned at their common anxiety.

"Back-to-back, my dad always says," Gladys offered.

"What does that mean?"

"If we fight with our backs to each other, they can’t get behind us."

Deborah nodded. "Back-to-back it is, then."

Gladys squared her shoulders determinedly and walked into the restaurant. Deborah followed.

"Zuleika Dobson, as I live and breathe!" a boisterous voice called out above the buzz of voices.

Other people looked up at them.

"Zuleika! Here! Here!" another agreed, staring at Deborah. Eating utensils began rhythmically tapping glassware.

"Who’s Zuleika Dobson?" Deborah whispered to Gladys.

"You. I’ll explain later."

A figure leaped up and strode toward them. "Dee?"

The face looked vaguely familiar, as if an impressionistic portrait of someone she couldn’t quite place.

"Why—it’s Bash Rowell, isn’t it?" She smiled warmly. She had not seen him in years, since before her first term at Branton. He was tall, and he carried himself with the same casual grace she remembered from his boyhood. His hair was wavy blond, and a lock of it fell Byronically across his brow. His blue eyes were disquieting. She tried not to look into them, which was difficult, because they stared deeply into hers.

"I had no idea you had come up to Oxford, Dee. Please join us. There’s rarely a table to be had in this bloody awful place. The food’s ghastly, the prices are outrageous, but it’s the place to go."

Without waiting for an answer, he led the way back to a table in a corner of the room. Deborah shrugged apologetically to Gladys. "There doesn’t seem anything else available."

"Your social life doesn’t seem a problem to me," Gladys replied with admiration.

"Childhood friend. Another exploiter of the masses, I’m afraid."

"I’ll look the other way in his case. He’s gorgeous."

Yes, he is, Deborah thought. Absolutely gorgeous. And then she knew why his eyes had bothered her so: they recalled his father’s exactly when she had spied Rob Rowell kneeling over her mother in the cottage. For an instant she was tempted to flee, but decided it was unfair to hang the son for the sin of the father.

Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). Stalking the Sky or Stalking the Sky (Kindle). A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time(Kindle); and Deeds or Deeds (Kindle).

How a Banker Capitalized on the Suez Crisis

In my historical novel BIRTHRIGHT, I wanted to show how Samuel Kronengold, the dominant figure in the British Kronengold bank, could try to maneuver political leaders to his will, while simultaneously deciding where to place the bank's investment bets. I chose the Suez Crisis. Egypt's President Nasser had just ordered the seizure of the Suez Canal from Britain and France. Along with Israel, they countered by attacking Egypt to retake the Canal, infuriating U.S. President Eisenhower. Within days, Britain's weak-willed prime minister, Anthony Eden, would cave in to the U.S. and end the invasion.

Here’s an excerpt that occurs just after the three countries attack Egypt:

EGYPT'S SEIZURE OF THE SUEZ CANAL from Britain and France in July of 1956 set into motion events on a scale far larger than a single person's or a single family's destiny. The resulting crisis four months later would threaten world peace; would shake the Atlantic alliance; would humiliate Britain, dishearten it, and hasten its decline, its self-absorption, and the fall of its prime minister. It would frustrate France and accelerate its loss of Algeria, the end of its Third Republic, and the return to power of Charles de Gaulle; and provoke hostility to Britain as a future Common Market partner. It would endow Israel with more secure borders for the next decade and a port on the Gulf of Aqaba, leading to the Indian Ocean; would safeguard Egypt and make a hero of Gamal Abdel Nasser, that nation's chief of state; and would sow the seeds of a pan-Islamic oil policy based on nationalistic needs and concerted action, which would someday bring to once poor countries wealth and power beyond their wildest hopes and shake the foundations of the industrialized world.

The first retaliation for Egypt's seizure of the Canal occurred on October 29, 1956, when Israel attacked Egyptian positions in the Sinai. Two days later, in accordance with a secret scheme previously agreed to with Israel, Britain and France began bombing Egyptian airfields, alleging they were acting to protect the Suez Canal, an essential international waterway. Israel had swept across the Sinai on schedule to prearranged positions near Suez while pressing southward to free the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.

As the days passed Anthony Eden, Britain's prime minister, hesitated to give the word that would unleash the French and British troops waiting on Cyprus and Malta and begin the full-scale attack. He faced a host of pressures: a popular outcry against the bombings in his own country, blustering condemnation from a Soviet Union allied with Egypt and trying to divert attention from its own invasions of Poland and Hungary, and perhaps most telling, United States President Eisenhower's fear that his own NATO partners were bringing the world to the brink of war. With only days remaining before the U.S. presidential election, Eisenhower, in order to force Britain to back down, was exerting both diplomatic influence in the United Nations and financial muscle by weakening the British pound.

Fearing that Eden was about to get cold feet and leave his secret Jewish allies militarily and diplomatically high and dry, Israeli high officials cast about for someone who might approach the British prime minister and allay his fears about Eisenhower's ability to undermine Britain's currency and economy. When they learned that Eden and his wife, Clarissa, were scheduled to attend a dinner at the home of Baron Samuel de Kronengold on that very night of November 4, 1956, they asked Pierre, his French cousin, to telephone Samuel about speaking to Eden.

Although Samuel was a contributor to Israel, the Israelis were far closer to Pierre, who spent a good deal of time in Israel and funded numerous projects there. The two cousins had been in negotiations for months about merging their banks into a larger, unified financial institution—after a century of separation—now that it appeared Britain would soon join the Common Market. Both men feared, among other things, that a failure to retake the Suez Canal and topple Nasser would result, instead, in toppling both the French and British governments. That would put an end to British acceptance into the Common Market for the time being and, thus, to the merger of the French and British Kronengold banks.

Samuel needed little convincing by Pierre, viewing Britain's refusal to knuckle under to Nasser as a reassertion, at last, of British greatness. He spent the day rehearsing the arguments he would use to stiffen Eden's backbone.

Only after dinner, when Samuel led the men, erect in black tie and tuxedo, to the Trophy Room, was he able to talk alone with Eden. Although they sat in a corner and conversed for a very long time, all of Samuel's persuasion proved fruitless; he found himself facing a very ill, very frightened man.

Read more:   BIRTHRIGHT bit.ly/PojdHz

In my novel Birthright or Birthright (Kindle), I wanted to show how the brilliant patriarch of the legendary Kronengold banking family discerned a similar brilliance in his five-year-old granddaughter Deborah that set her apart from the other children in the family. I chose the family's celebration of the Jewish holiday of Passover in which that incident could occur. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

Deborah was the youngest child present. She had been carefully schooled for several years in the table manners expected of an upper-class young lady, but she was nonetheless bewildered by the number of forks, knives, spoons, and glasses set out before her. When in doubt, she had been told, use the outside utensil, but no meal could possibly have so many courses. There was so much an adult had to know, she decided. No wonder it took so long to become one.

For children the high point of a seder is the hunt for the afikomen, a piece of matzo wrapped in a napkin that is hidden when none of them is looking. Deborah was all concentration, never taking her eyes off of the square of napkin-covered matzo beside her grandfather's plate. She was determined that the prize—traditionally money, she was told—would be hers.

But she had anticipated too soon. When dinner was finally brought in by a file of servants bearing gleaming silver trays, her attention was captured by the display. The butler led, his white collar high and starched, his black bow tie alert, like rabbit ears. Behind him were the liveried footmen. The young ladies who worked for the family followed, their backs straight, their cheeks slightly flushed at the notice their entrance was receiving.

"At last!" Malcolm cried out. "Another minute, and I'd have converted out of pure hunger."

Everyone laughed. Deborah's gaze shifted back to the napkin. It was gone! In that short moment of letting down her guard, someone had whisked it away. Halfway down the table, Malcolm was standing behind one of the relatives. Grandfather's eyes seemed to be laughing at her. All her advantage lost. Deborah folded her arms and glared at him.

When the children were finally unleashed, yapping and scuffling, she bounded to the head of the table. The others searched chuckling dinner guests or opened the doors of cabinets along the walls or peeked behind pictures, but she was convinced it had to be near Grandfather; her surveillance had been broken for only that single instant. Malcolm, empty-handed, had been too far down the table; he had been a decoy. Deborah studied Grandfather's face. He stared as intently at hers, his eyes once again seeming to laugh at her predicament.

"Deborah, you'd better hurry—someone else will find it," Malcolm's wife, Lavinia, prodded.

The heavy older man and the little girl continued to study each other. She could see clearly it was not in his lap or under his chair. Hands locked across his stomach, he sat unmoving in the tall chair. He seemed much stiffer than earlier in the evening. Of course! She plunged into the space separating his back from the upholstery. Having observed her sudden movement, the other children were rushing toward them. She groped around frantically. The bottom of his jacket felt hard and flat; her hands scrabbled underneath it—and the prize was hers. Triumphantly, she held up the glorious square white parcel. The adults applauded and cheered. Richard was fuming. The ignominy of being bested by someone as young, as insignificant, and as female as she was almost too crushing an embarrassment to bear. It would be days before he spoke to her again. She resolved not to care.

"My prize!" she demanded.

"What do you want?" Samuel asked.

"Money. That's the prize ... isn't it?"

"Perhaps some candy." His tone was teasing.

But it's supposed to be money!"

"Deborah, speak to your grandfather with more respect," her mother interjected sharply.

But she was not to be diverted. She continued to stare him down.

Samuel broke into a wide smile. "I honestly believe this monkey would go so far as to destroy my reputation in the City if I failed to pay what I owe her."

He lifted her onto his knee. "You sit here with me, little Deborah. Tomorrow morning I will withdraw one entire gold guinea from the bank just for you."

She hadn't the slightest idea what the value was of the coin Grandfather had named, having never possessed, nor needed to, even so much as a tuppence in her life. "Is that a lot of money?"

"A fortune," he assured her. "And afterward we shall go to a grand restaurant, you and I, to discuss important financial matters."

Deborah had never been to a restaurant, but had often stood yearning to join her mother as she pulled on her gloves and adjusted her hat in the mirror.

"Do you promise?"

He solemnly extended his hand. "Is my credit good until tomorrow?"

They shook hands, and she collapsed happily against his chest.

Read more: Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). bit.ly/PojdHz

The Birth of the Great Banking Families

I recently released my novel BIRTHRIGHT in Kindle and print, in which I wanted to show how the great banking families, like the one in my novel, the Kronengolds, began in banking and grew into dynasties . Here’s an excerpt:

The beginning of the nineteenth century was turbulent and unpredictable. Winds of democracy, unleashed by the French Revolution, were blowing across Europe, sucking war behind them like debris, until war in the person of Napoleon became the gale itself. In such times clever men could do well.

In Frankfurt there was such a man, Solomon ben Abraham, the only son of the goldsmith Abraham ben Itzakh. He had grown up with none of his father's superb skill at transforming cold, hard metal into gleaming beauty, and his father had feared for the boy's future: For generations beyond memory the family had produced renowned goldsmiths, so useful to the nobility that their house had been left relatively unscathed by the butchery that periodically assaulted the Jewish ghetto. Abraham soon realized, however, that his son had been born with a gift as rare as his own. He understood money in a way that amounted to a kind of genius. He could manipulate it with all the dazzling facility of an artist his paints or a composer his notes. By age ten Solomon could calculate exchange rates and all the coin values of Europe's profusion of duchies and principalities and nations at near instant speed. Before his bar mitzvah he had turned the front room of the family house into a store, from which he sold Abraham's work at prices the artisan had believed impossible and to which he soon added other goods imported from all over Europe.

As the years passed the store outgrew these quarters, and Solomon, now a young man, rented part of the house next door. He could have afforded to build his own by then, but there was no empty land left behind the heavy gates that, on Sundays and Christian holidays, locked Jews into the overcrowded Frankfurt ghetto. For the sign above his store he chose three golden crowns, the mark his father and those who came before him engraved on the bottom of their gold articles. Crowns had been chosen to denote family pride and derived in feeling from the five gold balls that were the insignia of their former patrons, the Medici, whose goldsmiths the family had been. The turmoil that followed Lorenzo's death drove Solomon's ancestors from Renaissance Florence, and they settled eventually in this bustling Teutonic city on the Main River. Beneath the three crowns—the insignia was reduced from five to three as a show of respect—Solomon directed the sign painter to write, not merchant, but money changer, and he took the gold crowns for a surname: Kronengold. In money itself, he sensed—one of the few careers permitted a Jew—was his future and the future of the sons his shrewd, virtuous wife had started to bear him.

If one were then to have picked a family that would rise to dominate the finances of Europe, surely one would have skipped the little building with three crowns over its door on a street only twelve feet wide in a teeming ghetto of outcasts. But Solomon Kronengold understood money. And his wife bore clever sons. And that was the beginning.

Read more: BIRTHRIGHT bit.ly/PojdHz

A Child Learns She Was Adopted into a Legendary Family

I’ve written several novels including A QUESTION OF PROOF, STAR TIME, and DEEDS. I recently released BIRTHRIGHT, in which I wanted to show the effect that learning of her adoption has on a highly intelligent child, my heroine Deborah de Kronengold.

Here’s an excerpt:

Now Deborah could express her own concern. "Mummy, I heard Father say he didn't know I'd be a savage when he agreed to take me in. What did he mean?"

Deborah saw her mother's body stiffen, and she held her breath.

"'Agreed to take'—oh, Dee, you must have misunderstood," Madeleine said in an oddly strained tone.
"That's what he said."

Madeleine's shoulders sank. Her wide brown eyes stared into Deborah's without blinking, as if hypnotized by headlights on a dark road crossing.

"I had hoped ... when you were older," she finally said. Her voice seemed to come from another part of the room. She glanced down and spent much too long straightening the blanket. "I'm so sorry it has come out this way. Perhaps it's for the best."

She brushed a stray lock off Deborah's forehead and took a deep breath. "Dee, six years ago, at the end of the war, I gave birth to a baby girl who died."

"Like Calico's kitten?"

"Yes, just like that."

Liquid was forming in the corners of Madeleine's eyes. "I had wanted a second baby very much. Just after the war ended, cousin Nathan called on the telephone to my brother, Pierre, who was in Italy, and told him what had happened. They both knew how much having a little girl meant to me." She gently touched Deborah's cheek. "Our family—your uncle Pierre's and mine—owned factories and a bank in Italy before the war, and Pierre had spent the war there, so he had many friends. One particular friend was a nun who was head of an orphanage where children were protected from the war and given a ... home." The last word caught in her throat. She lifted her eyes to Deborah's. "Your uncle Pierre decided to bring me the most beautiful, most wonderful little girl he could find to be my very own."

Madeleine embraced her daughter, their cheeks close. She could feel Deborah's heart pounding.

"Dee, you were only a few weeks old," Madeleine whispered. "You were the most marvelous baby in the world. He chose you for us out of all the other babies. And we adopted you."

Deborah had no idea what that meant, but it frightened her. "What's adopted?"

"Do you remember when I told you how babies are born?"

Deborah stared at her mother, barely nodding; she had struggled to understand Madeleine's very simplified explanation.

"Well," Madeleine continued, "you had ... you had a different mother you grew up inside of until you were ready to be born. Then I became your mother."

"Where is she?"

Madeleine could hardly hear her own answer. "She died too. You needed a new mother." Madeleine's heart cried out for all the distress battering her daughter at once. "My darling, I wanted so much to be your mother."

Deborah lurched apart from Madeleine. "You mean I'm ... like the war orphans!"

"Yes," Madeleine murmured.

"Is Richard adopted?"

"No, but that doesn't mean we love him any more than you."

"He belongs to you, and I don't!" The inescapable knowledge raked her soul and racked her small body with sobs. Even as Madeleine seized her in a hug to smother physically the misery consuming this child she loved so deeply, a void engulfed Deborah, a black horror isolating her from every other living being, every familiar object in the universe. Someone went shopping and brought home a child, Deborah thought. Much as one chooses a puppy, she had been chosen as a gift for this woman and her husband in London.

"Will you keep me?"

"Oh, God, we love you. You're our daughter." She crushed Deborah in her embrace.

Read more:  BIRTHRIGHT. bit.ly/PojdHz

The Life of a High-Spirited Aristocratic Child

I recently released my novel Birthright, in which I wanted to show how lively. clever and independent my heroine Deborah de Kronengold was even as a five-year-old in the sheltered world of the very rich aristocracy. Here’s an excerpt: IT HAS OFTEN BEEN WRITTEN that the Kronengolds are different from other people. On a spring afternoon in 1951, when Deborah de Kronengold was nearing her sixth birthday, she learned she was different from other Kronengolds. She had always known she was different in one way, of course: her red hair. She yearned to have brown hair like her mother, whom she adored. Her mother appeared thoughtful when Deborah demeaned her own hair color, not happy or indulgent, as she usually seemed when they were alone together. At those moments she would hug Deborah or reach forward impulsively to take her daughter's hand and tell her how fortunate she was to have such beautiful hair. But in the very possessiveness of her grip, Deborah could sense her mother's worry. A beautiful child with bright blue eyes from which a startling and precocious intelligence shone, Deborah was the only daughter of one of Britain's richest families. Despite such gifts, she had remained an affectionate little girl, sweet and considerate, but she possessed a prodigious store of energy. From the very first, Nanny Duhamel, a young Frenchwoman hired to watch over Deborah and perfect her French, had found herself unable to cope with Deborah's high spirits and curiosity. "It is the red hair ... that red hair," the harried nursemaid usually grumbled desperately as she raced after Deborah like a white kite the child suddenly yanked here to chase a squirrel or there onto some playground apparatus that brought her to the very rim of danger—and always when the inexperienced young woman least expected it. Nanny Duhamel breathed a sigh of relief at the end of this particular spring afternoon, when she could finally shepherd Deborah out of Hyde Park through the Park Lane exit in the direction of home. The Frenchwoman considered the day far more successful than most. Deborah had not added a new scrape to the small scabs that covered her knees and elbows like shifting squall clouds, and her hat and dress were still reasonably clean. The woman and her charge were only a couple of blocks from the house when, without warning, Deborah's face suddenly lit with a smile and she sprinted off. She had caught sight of her older brother, Richard, who had spent the day with his school friends, all out on spring "hols." Following at his back like a square-sailed galleon was his elderly Nanny Stock, too old to take on an energetic new charge like Deborah, but kept on out of obligation by the family. She both protected Richard and propelled him with a subtle dominance the young Frenchwoman admired, but feared she would never master. Richard was nine, three years older than Deborah. Like his parents, Richard had dark hair and eyes. His skin was pale and his physique very thin, conveying an impression of delicate health. As Deborah approached him, she could already sense that his attitude toward her now would be the sort of tolerant disdain he had increasingly adopted when they were in public, particularly when he was with his friends. "You're a child," he took pains to explain to her at such moments, "a tedious, silly child." The first time, she was too offended to react. The next time she had kicked him in the shins as hard as she could, and had been rewarded with a punch in the arm and then a slammed door between them. The exclusion had hurt far more than the blow. Deborah fell into step beside Richard and tried to begin a conversation, but all his attention was focused on the yo-yo he snapped down and up ahead of him as he walked, and Deborah was forced to fall silent beside him and watch. He had promised to play with her the night before and refused when he became absorbed in his stamp collection. He had then told her they would play today, and Deborah was eager for his company. She glared at the yo-yo as if at a mortal enemy. The Kronengold mansion rose like a gray fortress above one entire side of a park-like square in the Mayfair section of London. A black iron fence, like giant hair combs set on their spines, guarded the stone building's periphery. As they neared the front gate, Richard loosened the string around his middle finger, permitting Deborah her opportunity. She ripped the yo-yo out of his hand and raced ahead, the red hair whipping behind her like a cavalry flag. Richard gave chase, but she was too quick, bounding onto the stone pediment and statue at one side of the entrance and then scampering up the iron stanchion beside it to the top. Her hat had blown off, the white stockings had ripped, but Richard could not reach her. Balanced atop the narrow iron beam, feet planted between the pointed spikes, smiling at her advantage over him, she raised the yo-yo above her head. "Richard, if you climb after me, I'll throw it into the traffic." Nanny Stock had already gripped Richard's arm, her responsibility seen to. "Viens ici! Viens ici, je t'en prie!" Nanny Duhamel's face tipped up to Deborah, white with fear. She wanted to run into the house to summon help from one of the male servants, but feared to leave Deborah for an instant. "Please ... please ... come down," she begged helplessly, her arms bound to her sides, as if with ropes, by the possibility that an impulsive move on her part might cause the child to slip. Deborah ignored her. "Richard, if I give it back, do you promise to play with me after supper until bedtime?" "It's no concern of mine what you do with it," he answered. "I have another." His indifference was infuriating to her after days of it. "You're a liar, Richard Edgar Henri de Kronengold! This one is your favorite." She drew back her arm and studied his face. His mouth was quivering faintly. "And we play Family," she pressed. "Snakes and Ladders," he countered reluctantly. "Young lady, you are coming down!" Her father's voice. She looked toward the sound. He and her grandfather were striding toward her; she had not noticed the arrival of the black Rolls limousine that brought Father and Grandfather back from the bank. Grandfather's mansion spread over the next adjacent side of the square, so they occasionally rode home in one car. Her father was tall and strong, quite capable of reaching and lowering her. "Snakes and Ladders," Deborah swiftly agreed, and bent toward her father. Looping her arms around his neck, she dropped into his arms. "Good afternoon, Father." Read more: Birthright.

Life In New York City in the Early 1900s

In writing my book, Deeds, I wanted to depict the lives of three generations of the Behr family, beginning with Raphael Behar, who came to New York City in the early 1900s. I undertook a good deal of research to immerse the reader in that world and time. Here’s an excerpt: Raphael caught sight of the impossibly tall tower long before he reached Twenty-third Street, and was stunned by it. He hurried toward it. Stopping impatiently at a street corner to let a carriage move past, he counted the floors. Twenty! A slim and elegant wedge twenty stories high! Paris had ornate facades, but no building so modern, so striking as this. This was what he had come to America for. He stood in front of its entrance, staring upward in awe, blocking pedestrians who hurried by: women whose skirts swirled upward in the drafts caused by the tall building and the men trying to glimpse their ankles. “Twenty-three skidoo!” a large policeman with a walrus mustache pointed to the street sign on the Twenty-third Street corner jerked and his thumb to indicate Raphael must move on. No ogling the ladies’ ankles in his domain. The man’s accent was as Irish as the teamster’s who had driven Raphael from the pier. “What is it called, the building?” Raphael asked, bursting with curiosity. “The Fuller Company Building, but everyone calls it the Flatiron Building.” “Of what is the building made?” “Steel.” The policeman was used to the question. “A steel frame.” Again steel, Raphael observed, like the Eiffel Tower. The Greeks and Romans, the Gothic-cathedral builders, had all erected exquisite structures, but all were earthbound because they lacked the knowledge of building with steel. When a woman opened the door to leave the building, Raphael noticed the elevator inside the lobby. Steel to gain the height, he reflected, and an elevator because people cannot easily walk up more than maybe four or five floors. He thought, The lessons are all around me if I keep my eyes open. The signs and clothing changed abruptly when Raphael crossed the Bowery, leaving the Italian and entering the Jewish section. Many women wore ill-fitting wigs and, even in the heat, the men wore skull caps or black derby hats, and their dark suits covered layers of shabby clothing. Pushcarts formed a line along the gutter that slowed pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk to a trickle. Store signs were written both in English and Hebrew letters. But Raphael did not recognize the Hebrew words, until he sounded out the names “Goldstein and Weintraub,” which he recognized as Jewish names from Northern Europe, where Yiddish, not Ladino, was spoken; the Hebrew letters were being employed to write Yiddish. In English the sign declared that Goldstein and Weintraub were tailors. Such signs covered every storefront, hung from every shop. As Raphael made his way deeper into the Jewish section, the profusion of people and smells became stifling. He had to push his way through. He stopped at a cart with dates and figs among the fruit and okras among the vegetables. The man had a grand mustache and wore a fez. Raphael commented in Ladino on the quality of the foodstuffs. They struck up a short conversation. The man said he was from Smyrna, and that there are more of us here than you might think. But with so many Ashkenazi Jews, I wear a fez so our Sephardim can find my cart. At Allen Street a train rattled along the elevated right-of-way. Amplified along the dark tunnel formed by the track structure above and grimy buildings with saloons on both sides, the sound crushed down on him. A woman accosted him. He turned the corner and found someone who was able to direct him to the shirt store on Delancey Street. Read more: Deeds.ow.ly/ugqLC

What a Woman Must Overcome for Success in Finance

I’ve written several novels including <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>. I have recentlyreleased <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, in which I wanted to show what a woman has to go through to achieve success in the decidedly man's world of finance.  Here’s an excerpt:  

"Thank you, Mr. Landy. I've asked for this meeting in order to present some ideas that I think can be useful to the firm and, at the same time, demonstrate my capability to move into a position in investment banking."

"That's right," he replied, "you told me you were studying finance."

Deborah was encouraged by his having remembered and began to outline her thinking.

"Say, I've got tickets to the football game down at Princeton tomorrow," he interrupted. Same firm or not, you just have to bend the rules when a girl looks like this, he thought. "How would you like to drive down there with me, maybe make a whole weekend of it?"

"Thank you, but I've got plans already," she said politely, emphasizing by her tone that she had no intention of smudging the line drawn between a business and a social relationship. "The matter I've come to discuss could open up a major new source of revenue for our firm. I've done extensive research and come up with a list of excellent companies that are ripe for acquisition."

"Have the companies told you that?" he asked grumpily.

"They don't yet know that we're looking at them, nor would they until we've located the right client to acquire them. Some of the acquisitions might well have to be made against the wishes of the target company's management."

"How's that?"

"Our client would publicly offer to buy the target company's shares directly from the stockholders."

"That's a messy business which makes an awful lot of enemies, Miss Crown." He grinned patronizingly. "You haven't been involved in the financial world very long. Let me explain that that sort of thing just isn't done."

Deborah gritted her teeth. Landy sounded exactly like so many English bankers she had heard, exactly like Leslie, despite the gap of three thousand miles and a different culture and accent: "That's not the done thing, my dear, not done at all."

A wide smile exposed Landy's white teeth and boyish charm. "If you're sincerely interested in learning more about investment banking, why not come down to Princeton with me for the weekend?" he winked. "There are some things I'd love to teach you."

You're no different from Corcoran or any of the others, she thought with disgust. On the surface, better bred. But underneath, no different, no different at all.

"Mr. Landy," she concluded with a tight smile, "I don't need personal instruction to know that the purpose of an investment bank is to make money for the clients and for the partners. This proposal does that— they'll make money, lots of it. If you should happen to change your mind about the direction in which you wish to take your division, I'd be glad to speak further to you."

Read more:  <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, <ASIN: 098531446X> or <ASIN: B00CF3SD3G> (Kindle).