Ethel's Song
Ethel Rosenberg’s Life in Poems
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union against the United States, Ethel Rosenberg shares the story of her beliefs, loves, secrets, betrayals, and injustices in this compelling YA novel in verse.
In 1953, Ethel Rosenberg, a devoted wife and loving mother, faces the electric chair. People say she’s a spy, a Communist, a red. How did she get here? In a series of heart-wrenching poems, Ethel tells her story. The child of Jewish immigrants, Ethel Greenglass grows up on New York City’s Lower East Side. She dreams of being an actress and a singer but finds romance and excitement in the arms of the charming Julius Rosenberg. Both are ardent supporters of rights for workers, but are they spies? Who is passing atomic secrets to the Soviets? Why does everyone seem out to get them?
This first book for young readers about Ethel Rosenberg is a fascinating portrait of a commonly misunderstood figure from American history, and vividly relates a story that continues to have relevance today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Krasner's daring historical novel is a collection of fictionalized first-person poems that chronicles the life of Ethel Rosenberg (1915–1953), from her earliest years in a tenement on N.Y.C.'s Lower East Side to her final moments in Sing Sing prison, where she and her husband were executed for spying for the Soviets. As an idealistic young Jewish woman, Rosenberg dreamed of a career as an actor and singer, and fought for workers' rights. In 1936, she met and fell in love with charismatic Julius Rosenberg ("When he talks,/ all conversations stop"), an engineering college student and eventual Communist Party member, then married him in 1939. In addition to detailing the couple's lives as passionate Communists, culminating in their execution, this imagined account traces WWII's development and the U.S.'s postwar anti-Communist hysteria. Krasner's digestible poems build tension through Rosenberg's consistently proud, defiant voice, and her confidence that she and Julius did nothing wrong: "How could helping/ the Soviet Union/ defeat Hitler/ make us the bad guys?" Family photos, interspersed throughout, lend poignancy; an epilogue and timeline provide context and additional historical background. Ages 13–17.
