Sherri Stewart: A Song for Her Enemies
Sherri Stewart, author of A Song for Her Enemies, presents:
Our Story before the Story
By Tamar Kaplan and Neelie Visser
Hallo. That’s hello in the Nederlands language, but a lot of people call it Dutch. My name is Tamar Kaplan. I really don’t like to say my name. It seems to evoke the most puzzling reactions. The worst was the time my so-called friends at school burst out laughing at some private joke when someone called out, “Tamar.” I asked my mother about it later that night while she was doing dishes. I said, “Eema, what’s wrong with my name?”
She dried off her hands on a dish towel and took off her apron. “Nothing, sweetie. It’s a lovely name from the Bible.” When I pressed for more information, she waved a dismissive hand and said we’d talk about it when I was older.
Well, I’m older. And I’m facing the biggest challenge of my life in less than an hour. As the understudy for La Traviata’s Violetta, I’ll be playing the lead soprano role, since Margot huffed out of rehearsal when the producer made a comment about her weight.
I’ve been waiting for this night forever. Nerves invade every part of me. The producer doesn’t think I’ve experienced enough angst in my twenty-one years to play the role of a middle-aged courtesan. Angst? Sure I’m young and still live with my parents and brother, Seth, above the family’s jewelry shop in Haarlem, but there’s something about my religion that makes people back away. And I’ve seen the word, Juden, written across shop windows as if it were a terrible thing. And there’s those Nazi soldiers standing on street corners. Papa says not to worry about them. They mean no harm.
Fifteen minutes to curtain. I need to focus on playing Violetta, and I should pray, though it seems God is so distant. Maybe He doesn’t care about Nederland. Still, I will pray for angst, and maybe He will answer my prayer.
—
My name is Neelie Visser. Ever since Frans died last year, I’ve been wandering aimlessly around our house on the canal, wishing I had someone to talk to, something worthy to do with my free time. I still chat with Frans as if he were in the room, but my words seem to echo off the walls. Jan comes home once in a while. He’s always in such a rush, but I make him sit for a meal because he’d getting much too thin for a nineteen-year-old college student.
Jan is involved in something dangerous. Mothers know things like that. I’d bet a plate of boterkoeken he’s involved with the Resistance. It doesn’t surprise me since he always had a heart for the underdog, even if he got in trouble for defending them.
There’s talk among the other violinists at the opera that things are going to get worse here in our country. How could they get any worse? The ration card is depleted in a month. And neighbors are afraid to stop for a chat—they just hurry past with their heads down. I’ve seen the debris outside looted shops on the Barteljorisstraat, and nobody does anything. Haarlem has always been a proud and tidy town. Well, I will do something. But what can a forty-two-year-old second-chair violinist do? Maybe Jan will have some ideas when he comes for tea.
Sherri Stewart loves a clean novel, sprinkled with romance and a strong message that challenges her faith. She spends her working hours with books—either editing others’ manuscripts or writing her own. Her passion is traveling to the settings of her books, sampling the food, and visiting the sites. She loves the Netherlands, and she’s still learning Dutch, although she doesn’t need to since everyone seems to speak perfect English. A recent widow, Sherri lives in the Orlando area with her lazy dog, Lily, and her son, Joshua, who can fix anything. She shares recipes, tidbits of the book’s locations, and pix in her newsletter. Subscribe at http://eepurl.com/gZ-mv9
A Song for Her Enemies https://amzn.to/2YJBkRn
After Nazi soldiers close the opera and destroy Tamar Kaplan’s dream of becoming a professional singer, she joins the Dutch Resistance, her fair coloring concealing her Jewish heritage. Tamar partners with Dr. Daniel Feldman, and they risk their lives to help escaping refugees. When they are forced to flee themselves, violinist Neelie Visser takes them into hiding.
Tamar’s love for Daniel flowers in hardship, but she struggles with the paradox that a loving God would allow the atrocities around her. When Tamar resists the advances of a Third Reich officer, he exacts his revenge by betraying the secrets hidden behind the walls of Neelie’s house. From a prison hospital to a Nazi celebration to a concentration camp, will the three of them survive to tell the world the secrets behind barbed wire?
A Song for Her Enemies is the story of a talented young opera singer and the bittersweet love that grows amid the tyranny and fear of World War II. Set against the backdrop of neighbors willing to risk their lives in the German-occupied, war-torn Netherlands, A Song for Her Enemies is an inspiring and beautiful novel celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the determination of Christians in the face of persecution. It is a novel for everyone seeking to understand the pain of the past and be inspired to embrace hope for the future.
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