All Other Nights: A Novel [Hardcover]

Dara Horn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2009

A gripping epic about the great moral struggles of the Civil War.

How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862 he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.

After that night, will Jacob ever speak for himself? The answer comes when his commanders send him on another mission—this time not to murder a spy but to marry one.

A page-turner rich with romance and the history of America (North and South), this is a book only Dara Horn could have written. Full of insight and surprise, layered with meaning, it is a brilliant parable of the moral divide that still haunts us: between those who value family first and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A Civil War spy page-turner meets an exploration of race and religion in 19th-century America in Horn's enthralling latest. Jacob Rappaport, the 19-year-old scion of a wealthy Jewish import-export family, flees home and enlists in the Union army to avoid an arranged marriage. When his superiors discover his unique connections, he is sent on espionage missions that reveal an American Jewish population divided by the Mason-Dixon line, but united by business, religious and family ties. After being sent to assassinate his uncle in New Orleans on Passover, Jacob's next assignment proves even more daunting: marry the feisty Confederate spy Eugenia Levy. What starts out as a dangerous game for both Jacob and Eugenia ends up being a genuine romance, fraught with the potential for peril, betrayal, tragedy and redemption. Horn propels the love story at a thriller's pace; the mix of love and loyalty played out in a divided America is sublime. (Apr.)
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From School Library Journal

Sometimes it only takes one night to change lives forever, often in ways that people only appreciate when reflecting from the distance of time. Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, will forever ponder the age-old question asked around the Seder table: How is tonight different from all other nights? On Passover 1862, Jacob is ordered by a Union commander to kill his uncle (who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln), and this particular evening changes forever his view of religious tradition, love, and integrity. Horn, the award-winning author of The World To Come, has written a stunning historical novel that will challenge readers' preconceptions as they learn about the role of Jewish Americans during the Civil War. Her tale of Confederate Hebrew spies skillfully puts a new spin on a time period that has been researched and written about extensively. This timely book, coming on Lincoln's bicentennial year, is recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/08.]—Marike Zemke, Commerce Twsp. Community Lib., MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (April 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393064921
• ISBN-13: 978-0393064926
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dara Horn was born in New Jersey in 1977 and received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 2006, focusing on Hebrew and Yiddish. In 2007 Dara Horn was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the "Best Young American Novelists". Her first novel, "In the Image," published by W. W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her second novel, "The World to Come," published by W. W. Norton in January 2006, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, was selected as an Editor's Choice in The New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into eleven languages. She has taught courses in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Harvard and at Sarah Lawrence College, and has lectured at universities and cultural institutions throughout the United States and Canada. Her new novel, "All Other Nights," was published by W. W. Norton in April 2009. She lives with her husband, daughter and two sons in New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I love Dara Horn's books, but I found this one disappointing., April 12, 2009

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: All Other Nights: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This review will not have any spoilers.

One of my favorite books is Dara Horn's first novel, In the Image. It's simply marvelous. Her next book, The World to Come, was also a winner although I didn't like it quite as much.

Having enjoyed those books I was really, REALLY looking forward to this one. And I am sorry to say that I was really disappointed with it and I was surprised that my reading experience was so different than so many other reviewers.

This is the story of a young Jewish man, Jacob Rappaport, who becomes a spy for the Union during the Civil War. He is chosen for this role because he has certain important family connections with people in high places in the Confederacy.

Jacob is sent on several morally ambiguous assignments, and he dutifully complies. He is eventually sent to stay with relatives who are suspected of being Confederate supporters and spies and his mission is to marry one of the young daughters. What he didn't count on was falling in love.

I did learn some interesting information in this book, especially about the roles and prevalence of Jews on both sides of the conflict during this war. I had no idea that the Confederate Secretary of State was a Jewish man named Judah Benjamin. What the author does well is show that despite allegiances to either side, Jews were still considered outsiders; often treated with derision and suspicion.

I also thought that the author did a good job of showing how good people can be put in complex and thorny situations where they have to make difficult moral choices - where no matter what they do, they do not come out with clean hands.

I did have some problems with this book, and one is that I thought that it bogged down in places. I was surprised to see this novel described as a page-turner because it sure wasn't that for me, although the author's previous books were. (This novel does differ from her previous books in that it is more traditional in format, and the story telling is straightforward and linear.)

I also had problems with the characters. I found Jacob to be too self-depreciating and full of low self-esteem and self-doubt, to the point that I had trouble understanding why one of the other important characters, Jeannie, fell in love with him. I started feeling about him the way he felt about himself, which wasn't good. I had trouble sympathizing (or empathizing) with him, and he never came alive as a character for me - he never seemed real, and he seemed to deal with his situations and moral dilemmas by either denigrating himself or hand-wringing.

I also had trouble understanding what motivated Jeannie, and why she made the choices that she made. Like Jacob, I could never get a handle on her.

Lastly, I thought that the author was rather heavy-handed and obvious in trying to get her points made, such as the fact that race doesn't matter, and that we are all the same under our skin:

"soldiers and slaves, and girls, black and white, little boys and old women, many of them drunk. all of them raving - were walking around dazed, their clothing and faces and hands and hair painted with a layer of gray soot. The effect was to erase the races, making the white people look like Negroes and the Negroes look like whites."

Although I am disappointed in this book I do highly recommend Dara Horn's first brilliant novel, In the Image. You can't go wrong with that one.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "On some other night...everything would be different", April 4, 2009

By 

Judith Paley (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: All Other Nights: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

The 'Four Questions' text asks "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Jacob Rappaport is assured in "All Other Nights" that "What you allow to happen on one night will happen on all other nights as well." Which is it? Jacob's redemption hangs in the balance.

Ms. Horn has written a wonderfully researched, compelling piece of historical fiction. Who thinks about Jews in America during the Civil War, much less Jews as spies or Confederates? If you'd like to go to a place and time about which you've not given a moment's thought, check out this book. Beautifully written, it's an absorbing read and thought-provoking as well. Ms. Horn joins Anita Diamant as a top-notch chronicler of Jewish life as it may well have been.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is a bit, a bit repetitious, May 6, 2009

By 

HardyBoy64 "RLC" (Rexburg, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: All Other Nights: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

(May contain spoilers but you shouldn't read this book anyway).

Honestly, there is not a lot to like about this novel. The plotline is extremely convoluted and the characters are just not likeable. The men are lustful idiots and the women are conniving tricksters. The biggest problem, for me, was the very poor execution of the writing. There is so much repetition. The author can't describe a southern woman without having to mention "the errant curls" in her face and the thousands of times she has to tuck them behind the ear. The prose literally becomes funny near the end of the novel. Jacob, the protagonist, wonders many, many times that "it is all just a dream" and "it was as if he were in a nightmare". The funniest repeating description is after Jacob loses his eye and the myriad of funny lines that follow: "He couldn't take his eye off Jeannie", "the eyes of every man in the room bulged, including Jacob's remaining eye", "he squinted his remaining eye","...she said, glaring at his remaining eye" and "a picture unfurled before his remaining eye as he connected the dots..." (these repetitions are laughably numerous).

And I have to mention this funny line when the author writes "The corridor was lined with books, but the study was positively vomiting them" (p. 257) Too funny and quite painful, in my opinion.

Beyond the extreme repetition, the Jewish approach to the Civil War is handled very poorly, in my opinion. This topic seems original and full of potential, but the writing is so bad and the treatment of Jews in the war so trite, that it's a complete literary mess. Jacob comes to no spiritual understanding of what he's done and thus there is no redemption at all for his past sins. Judaism doesn't even matter to him in the end. How poorly the Jewish aspect is handled can be seen in this one line alone when she writes "The three Christian men at the table looked at his wounded Hebrew body and saw salvation incarnate". (p. 254) Silly, superficial and meaningless.