Jazz Club Spy

by Roberta Rich

Genres: World War II; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

From the author of the “riveting” (Chicago Tribune) The Midwife of Venice, a fresh and sweeping historical novel following a Jewish woman attempting to bring justice to her family on the eve of World War II.

New York City, 1938: At the height of the Great Depression, a time when President Roosevelt is trying to keep America out of World War II, Giddy Brodsky is lucky to have a job as a cigarette girl at a Manhattan jazz club. Nevertheless, she dreams of establishing a cosmetics business and leaving the poverty-stricken Lower East Side tenements behind. She has lived there with her family ever since they fled Russia, forced to emigrate after a group of Cossacks burned down their village, and her memories continue to haunt her.

Giddy tries to focus on the future until, during an evening streetcar ride, she thinks she recognizes one of the Cossacks who changed her life forever. Determined to get answers, she enlists the help of Carter van der Zalm, the Chief Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, who is hunting the same man. He suspects the Russian is involved in an assassination plot that will destroy American and Soviet relations, and he enlists Giddy to moonlight as a spy for him. But when she finally tracks down the man they’re both seeking, she finds herself in the middle of a shocking political conspiracy that changes everything she once held true.

In the tradition of Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept and Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, The Jazz Club Spy is a glittering and gritty look at pre-WWII America, and the personal battle one woman wages between justice and forgiveness.

Release date: April 4, 2023

Publisher: Gallery Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

Prologue

Stulchyn, Russia

January 1920

Horses do not trample children, not even dead children. That's why I wasn't afraid. Not at first. 

I heard the Cossacks before I saw them. I was in the hen house, collecting eggs for breakfast when the thunder of hooves, the snorting of horses, harsh shouts, and the metal clang of swords reached me. Soon there were other sound — women and girls weeping, the screams of men and boys. 

I ran to the window of the coop and saw a dozen soldiers in the distance. Even though I had never seen one before, I knew who they were. Ever since I was a baby, I'd heard stories of the Cossacks, the Czar's special troops, and their terrifying attacks. 

Ever since I was a baby, I'd heard stories of the Cossacks, the Czar's special troops, and their terrifying attacks.

I couldn't stay in the hen coop. The Cossacks would come for our plump hens and anything else they could eat or stuff in their saddlebags, including me. I was five, old enough to know that the Cossacks' taste for little children was as strong as their thirst for vodka. 

But where could I go? The river was too far, the banks too steep. I would fall in and freeze. I was only wearing my nightie with the blue and red flowers and the red hat my bubbe had knit for me. Running was no use. I must hide. I could sprint to our cottage where Ma, Bekka, and baby Yossel were, but the soldiers would catch me. I was the fastest girl my age in our shtetl, but no girl can outrun a horse. There were no forests, no trees to conceal me. Because it was such a cold winter, Count Oshefsky had ordered the woodlands chopped down for firewood: first the ash, then the pines, then the birch, then the oak. 

The Cossacks were headed for our village square. I could see the hoofprints, big as dinner plates, that their horses left in the snow. I could smell the stink of the pig fat they used to grease their saddles. I ducked down and watched through the slats of the coop as two Cossacks left their comrades and approached our cottage. I yelled at them to go away, but they weren't deterred. One of the Cossacks touched his pine torch to the roof. Whoosh, and soon it was orange flames. I expected Ma and Bekka to run out with baby Yossel in their arms, but no one appeared. Had they escaped? Or worse, were they trapped inside? Angry tears dripped down my cheeks and froze into salty icicles. 

I popped up and threw eggs at the soldiers. One hit the hindquarters of a horse, making him skitter and buck, and I hid again. It was not a smart thing to do. Through the crack, I saw one of the Cossacks force his horse in a circle, sawing the iron bit back and forth until its mouth was torn and bloody, and trot toward me. I made myself as small as possible. The Cossack looked more like a dybbuk from a nightmare than a man. He had rings of fat around his neck, and his sheepskin hat sat high on top of his head like a drum. In one fist, he held a nagaika, whirling it above him. The snap of the whip sounded like a pistol shot. His stallion reared up, hooves pawing the air. But before he could reach me, his comrade shouted to him, and they both galloped toward the shul where Pa was at morning prayers.

I let out the breath I was holding. Desperate, I looked behind the coop and spotted the carcass of my bubbe's cow, Laska, twenty feet away. The fawn-colored Laska with her soft brown eyes had died of old age when the ground was too frozen to bury her, and the vultures and crows had picked her clean. An idea came to me — the Cossacks would not see me curled inside Laska. I murmured a broche in thanks. She had given me her rich milk. Now she would give me the gift of her bones. God and Laska would keep me safe.

I hiked my nightie up to my knees, opened the door of the coop, and ran, crouching low. Laska's carcass was a white mound, covered in snow, straw, and chicken droppings. I tugged aside her skull. Luckily, I was small for my age, and I jammed myself in, as snug as an egg in its shell. My head stuck out the opening where Laska's calves used to be born. I was safe but what of my family?

I knew I shouldn't look, but I couldn't help myself. I pried apart two ribs and peered out to see the village square where the Cossacks were waving their swords and pine torches. Sparks shot into the air like giant fireflies. The timbers of the shul caught fire, smoked, smouldered, and then crashed to the ground with a thump. If I squinted, I could see inside. The altar cloth my mother had embroidered with gold thread curled up in the heat. The candlesticks were gone. The silver kiddush cups were gone. My breakfast porridge turned hard in my belly as the Cossacks fanned out, setting fire to the straw roofs of cottages, attacking our neighbours with bayonets when they spilled out of their homes. 

My breakfast porridge turned hard in my belly as the Cossacks fanned out, setting fire to the straw roofs of cottages, attacking our neighbours with bayonets when they spilled out of their homes.

I shut my eyes and kept them closed for a long time. Laska's ribs poked into my back and legs, but I pretended they were Ma's arms hugging me tight. It will be over soon, Giddy. Ma always said this when bad things happened. Any minute, she would come and scoop me into her arms. Until then, I would be brave. I imagined myself snuggled in her bed wrapped in a goose down quilt, dreaming of a warm spring morning, golden wheat rippling in the field and new lambs bleating for their ewes in the meadow. 

When I opened my eyes again, the sun was low in the smoky sky. I listened but all was still except for the boom boom of my heart and the odd snap of burning wood. The Cossacks had ridden off with the candlesticks from the shul, our red hens, and my childhood.