Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Works in Progress

Works in Progress

The Ninth Day
Young adult historical fiction/fantasy
Ooligan Press, Fall 2013

"The times, they are a-changin'"
— Bob Dylan (shown here with Joan Baez),
from the title song of his album released in January, 1964

This companion novel to Blue Thread takes us to Berkeley, California, in December, 1964, and to Paris, France, in December, 1099, at the time of the First Crusade. Miriam Hope Friis is a bright and talented young woman in search of her voice. Due to a pronounced stutter, Hope struggles to communicate—which becomes especially challenging as the Free Speech Movement engulfs Berkeley. The one person with whom she shares a special connection is her ailing grandfather, whose own unbelievable past soon embroils Hope in a journey through time and history in a quest to save a baby from an awful fate. Hope must find her voice—and confront her own personal mistakes—or face the terrible consequences.

Headlines

Young adult historical fiction

Headlines is set in the Cold War era of bobby socks, doo-wop music ... and lynching. Background characters include Elvis, Sputnik 2 and its canine cosmonaut Laika, and the nine black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School under U.S. Army protection.

"Negroes" is what you should call blacks in fictional Sandy Heights, New Jersey, in 1957—if you respect them as much as student journalist Barbara "Babs" Rosen thinks she does. Babs vows to stop a white-supremacist bully from inciting a race riot at their high school's dance. She pressures friends to help her gather evidence and write an exposé about the bully for the local newspaper. But the published article fails to name names, and the principal merely cancels the dance. No one seems to care, until a black classmate Babs barely knows challenges her to cross the school’s racial divide. Babs collaborates on a confrontation she fears might backfire and about which she has promised to write not one single word.