Review
Dara Horn's third novel,
All Other Nights, shimmers with emotion and
historical detail. Set amidst the tumult of the Civil War, Jacob Rappaport is on
a quest to find himself. When he flees his parents' wealthy New York life, he
knows little of himself or the world. His journey takes him into the bowels of
evil, self-loathing and despair; yet there is redemption to be found as well as he
struggles to make sense of love and duty.
What makes Jacob Rappaport so incredibly interesting is that he is a villain
without even realizing it. Though he comes from a religious tradition that
values free will, Jacob, in the beginning, has little understanding that he
actually has it. Desperate to be taken seriously by the Union Army because he
has been discounted by his father his entire life, he quickly agrees to kill his
uncle, a Rebel suspected of plotting to...
Beyond the Book
The Life & Times of Judah Benjamin
All Other Nights incorporates a number of historical characters, but perhaps the most integral to the tale is Judah Benjamin, the Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America.
Judah Benjamin was born in 1811 in the West Indies during the British
occupation of the Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands). He emigrated
with his father, an English Jew, and mother, a Portuguese Jew, to the USA a few
years later and was brought up in North and South Carolina. He entered Yale Law School
at 14 years of age but left without a degree. In 1832, he moved to New Orleans, LA, where he...
