Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One girl's difficult choice during the Spanish Inquisition., August 18, 2001
The year is 1492, the place is Spain, and fourteen-year-old Maria is on her own. Her parents and little brother are dead. She hasn't seen her only living relative, her uncle, who is a sea captain, in years. Desperate, she goes to the church her family attended to ask for help. The church helps her to get a position as a maid to a wealthy family, the Delgados. The Delgados are Conversos. They are Catholic now, but in the past, the family was Jewish. The church has placed her in the Delgado home as nothing more than a spy to find out if the family is secretly practicing their old religion. At first Maria is repulsed by the idea of working for a family that was once Jewish, but she comes to see that the Jews are not the evil villains the church has portrayed them as. When suspicion of heresy falls on the Delgados, she is forced to make a difficult choice. I highly reccomend this well-written and fascinating historical novel.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Secrets in the House of Delgado, July 15, 2002
This young adult novel plops the reader into Spain of 1492: not the Spain of Columbus and his travels to the Americas, sponsored by the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, but the Spain of the Inquisition. One experiences the Spain that drove out the Moors and mandated conversion to Catholicism by all Jews who chose to remain. Maria, a fourteen-year-old orphaned,peasant girl, gains employment in the home of wealthy Conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism) via the intervention of a priest. He mentions that she must look for signs of heresy; she readily agrees hoping for a roof over her head and, perhaps, even a welcoming home. Built into the plot are accurate historical descriptions of daily life and background explanations outlining the complicated history of the Jews in Spain. Maria has some personal and ethical decisions to make and the reader, too, becomes swept up in the conflict, ironically similar to issues of religious tolerance debated today. Though at times the characters need more development, and the plot is predictable, I found the novel made history feel real. It would be a great addition to a humanities class studying anything from the Crusades, the "discovery" of America, Spain and the Inquistion or the history of religious conflict.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good research rings true, September 14, 2005
My 14-year-old daughter and I read this book aloud. We recommend it without reservation for those interested in living the final days of the Jewish expulsion from Spain under the Inquisition of the Catholic church.
The adolescent main character, Maria, was a Catholic sent by the church as a servant--and a spy--to a family of Conversos, those forced under duress to convert from Judaism to Catholicism. The plot took us to many sectors of the populace: the perpetrators, the victims, and those stuck in between. Maria exemplified the confusion of normal people caught in a horrific historical period. The author clearly exposed the injustices of the rampant antisemitism of the time as well as the deep seated beliefs of different Conversos. I found that element particularly interesting. What I hadn't realized is that some families had been Conversos for many generations before the final expulsion from Spain. The main characters had depth and underwent change as the story progressed--both necessary elements of good chldren's literature.
Maria was a typical teenager to whom any teenage girl could relate. She was faced with temptations and difficult choices. Actually, most every character faced impossible choices. The plot had so many suspenseful twists and turns that we could hardly put the book down. It helped us to place ourselves in that period. Not all stories lead us to be so entirely 'simpatico', another necessary element of good literature for any age.
Since I also highly esteemed the book "The Last Jew" by Noah Gordon, from the same period, I tried to read that aloud. I found very early on that it was too steeped in adult situations for my teenager's liking. She nixed it very early on--even when I did some creative read-editing on the spot. But it's an excellent Inquisition novel for adults interested in the period for the same reasons that made "Secrets of the House of Delgado" a good read for the family.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
