In the Shadow of Alabama - by Judy Reene Singer (Paperback)

About the Book

Rachel Fleischer returns home to visit her dying father despite their difficult relationship. After he dies during surgery, she receives a visit from a stranger and begins to learn her father's story.

Book Synopsis

Judy Reene Singer's newest novel is a masterful story of the American experience. Between the past and present, between love and war, between the burdens of race and hope, a woman returns home to discover her father and a history she had never known...

Rachel Fleischer has good reasons not to be at her father's deathbed. Foaling season is at hand and her horses are becoming restless and difficult. Her critical mother and grasping sister could certainly handle Marty Fleisher's resistance better without her. But Malachi, her eighty-something horse manager--more father to her than Marty has ever been--convinces Rachel she will regret it if she doesn't go.

When a stranger at her father's funeral delivers an odd gift and an apology, Rachel finds herself drawn into the epic story of her father's World War II experience, and the friendships, trauma, scandal, and betrayals that would scar the rest of his life--and cast a shadow across the entire family. As she struggles to make sense of his time as a Jewish sergeant in charge of a platoon of black soldiers in 1940s Alabama, she learns more than just his history. She begins to see how his hopes and disappointments mirror her own--and might finally give her the means to free herself of the past and choose a life waiting in the wings.

"Prepare for Singer to keep you up all night ricocheting between a present day horse farm, family traumas, and the unthinkable racism in the military during WWII. The long arm of war travels through generations in this emotional drama." --New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Sheehan

About the Author

Born in Alabama and raised in New York, Judy Reene Singer is a former high school English teacher. When not writing or riding horses, she donates her time to animal rescue. She is the author of Horseplay (Random House, 2004), Still Life with Elephant (Morrow, 2009) and An Inconvenient Elephant (Morrow, 2010).