Felice's Worlds by Henry Massie

Today as part of the Pump Up Your Books Blog Tour I am proud to be sharing a guest post from Henry Massie the author of Felice's Worlds:From the Holocaust to the Halls of Modern Art. He will talk about what inspired him to write Felice's World:

Felice's Worlds
by Henry Massie
Publisher: booksbeNimble
Publication date: February 14, 2012
Genre: Memoir/Historical/Biography
Purchase: Amazon

From the author:

I had listened to my mother’s tales all my life and wanted to share them. She was an escapee from a Polish shtetl wiped out by the Nazis, a high-school political activist in Lithuania, a university student in France who lost her first love tragically, a partisan for Arab-Jewish co-existence in Palestine who was caught in the first intifada in 1936, and a penniless arrival to America in 1937. Yet when she died she had amassed one of the most important collections of Modern Art in the world and was a university lecturer on the subject. In writing about her, I understood for the first time how her experience of losing loved ones to the Nazis had been passed on to her American son. But as a psychiatrist, I was drawn to Felice’s story because it shows so much resilience in the face of terrible emotional trauma. Her life dramatizes how just keeping on through days of having nothing but a belief that "someday I will have something," can be a powerful survival tool. – Henry Massie 

Guest Post:

My mother entertained me with her adventures from the time I was a small child.  She was a great story teller and I had a very dramatic vision of her and her life and times.  As I grew older I wanted to share her stories with others.  Sometimes she would tell an episode around our family dinner table.  Sometimes she would launch into an adventure when we were with guests.  At times she shared them with me alone, especially as she grew older after my father passed away.

There were many different parts and periods to her life, and her stories revealed her as a  bold, colorful, impulsive, brilliant woman who knew how to seize a moment and make it hers.  The experiences she recounted brought to life bygone eras better than any history book, more completely than any movie.

For example, I learned about life in the poor farming village of her girlhood in Poland near the Russian border.  I learned what it was like to be singled out as "the pretty one, sprightly, special little girl whose father, the mayor, sent her away to get an education."   She became the first girl from her village to go to university.  I learned how she came of age in the 1930s and used the ruse of a false marriage to escape from the Nazis and enter Palestine.  There she received the death threats from both Jews and Arabs because she treated everybody equally.  Bitterly disappointment by the violence there, America beckoned her.  I saw her descending the gangplank at Ellis Island in 1937, a young,  penniless  woman with a mission to send back money to rescue her family.  She placed an  ad offering child-care in the New Haven, Connecticut newspaper.  Within days she moved into the home of the President of Yale University to be his daughter's governess and French and Latin tutor.  This was her first work in America; her last work was as a philanthropist.  In between she gathered one of the foremost collections of American Abstract Expressionist Art anywhere.  Toward the end of her life she told me the tragedy of the death of her first love when she was a student in France, which she had kept secret.

I was born in St. Louis, Missouri the day the Nazis marched into her little village and decimated the townspeople.  Thus another reason I wrote FELICE'S WORLDS was to recount how the trauma of the Holocaust imprinted itself on her and how she passed this emotional trauma on to the next generation.  I knew how her losses affected my mother because I heard her nightmares and her pacing at night.

However only as I wrote her memoir, often in her very words, did I understand for the first time how I too had been affected by her experiences.  The writing also became my memoir, and the insights about the psychological trauma of war as well as her resilience seemed important to share with others.~Henry

About the author:

Henry Massie is a psychiatrist, award-winning author, and pioneering researcher in the field of autism. FELICE'S WORLDS--From the Holocaust to the Halls of Modern Art, is the a memoir and biography of his mother, a brilliant and beautiful woman who participated in many of the most critical periods of the 20th Century. If you liked AWAY by Amy Bloom, or LOST IN TRANSLATION by Eva Hoffman, you should really meet Felice.

 Thanks for sharing your mother's story with us.

The Gift of El Tio by Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans

Today I am pleased to be bringing you a guest post from the authors of the memoir The Gift of El Tio as part of Tributes Books Blog Tour. Please join me in welcoming Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans.

As the cold wind whistled past the black mouth of the cave in the cliffs above his village of San Cristobal, cacique Juan de la Cruz wrapped his coat about him and again stared into the flames for a sign, a message from a spirit, a ghost, or in this case, from his god, El Tio.  “Be patient,” he said.  He spit as he spoke again of the prophecy that would soon be fulfilled.  I sat beside him in the shelter of the cave, the cold seeped from the rock walls to freeze my behind as my face burned in front of the fire.  There was no message.  The spirits and ghosts didn’t speak, but Juan already knew that a dozer would soon level his Quechua village, and he knew very well that I was responsible.

While prospecting in southwest Bolivia in 1996, I discovered an enormous deposit of silver beneath his village.  To make a mine, my company had to move the people to a new site.  Karen and I lived among the people for ten years to document the effects of my discovery, all of which are recorded in our recent memoir, The Gift of El Tio.  After a short time of living with the Quechua, we learned my discovery had been specifically foretold for over 400 years, the people knew the silver was there all along.  It turns out I was merely a pawn of their god of the underworld, El Tio, guided to Bolivia to help fulfill a promise he had made.

“El Tio promised us a gift…,” Don Juan said, stuffing more coca leaf into his already bulging mouth, “…to change our lives forever.  We will have so much wealth, so much silver our houses will shine white in the sun, we will not even count our change in the market.”

This prophecy was passed down orally from father to son for at least ten generations; it is known by everyone.  I first heard it from some hitchhikers going to the dry lake near Uyuni to gather salt.  I paid no attention to it.  I am a scientist.  Math and physics leave little room for ancient prophecies; there is no icon on my calculator for computing a prophecy made by a naked, beer-bingeing, cannibalistic god of the underworld.  I found it a curious story, quaint, picturesque even, but it was well beyond my ability to believe in such things.  That is, until I heard the whole story.

The animist culture of the Quechua allows for a pantheon of gods, the Catholic god and the Pachamama foremost among them, but also innumerable lesser gods, spirits, goblins, souls and devils of various sorts.  One, a particularly cruel and peevish god, El Tio, lives his entire life within the black interior of mountains, guarding his precious veins of gold and silver, a god never born but who actually was constructed by the Spanish merely to frighten the local workers.

El Tio suddenly appeared in the mines of the Andes as an adult around the year 1605.  Even in the absolute black of his subterranean home, El Tio’s beard and mustache glow orange or yellow.  His eyes are blue; his face, Caucasian, resembling those of his creators, the Spanish overlords who ruled by the whip in the mines of Bolivia.  The Spanish had molded a clay god after their own diabolic image and enthroned him to rule in this sunless underworld, telling the exhausted workers that this hideous clay figure was El Diablo, their Dios of the mine, their god who guaranteed torture and death for anyone who dreamed he could somehow escape the impossible quota of toil demanded of every indigenous male in the Andes.  The miners certainly came to fear El Tio for they soon learned the hard way that their new god had an insatiable appetite for human flesh.  He was always hungry.

The rumor is that the Quechua could not pronounce the lisp in the Spanish “Dios.”  Over the years it became “Tios,” then “El Tio.”

As told in The Gift of El Tio, the people believe El Tio had hidden a gift for those who continued to believe in him, a gift to be unveiled after 400 years in the year 2000.  I discovered the silver in 1996, close enough for the people to believe my discovery was the fulfillment of El Tio’s promise.  Coincidences such as this do not exist in the world of science; everything must be rational, but truth is I did begin to wonder, to question.  I started attending the numerous Quechua ceremonies in order to document their old ways.  In doing so, I became enthralled by the Quechua culture.

In The Gift of El Tio Karen and I document how the gift was discovered, how it changed the lives of the villagers, how it did, indeed, make them wealthier beyond their dreams, and how their new homes did shine white in the sun.  We also document how, true to the perverse nature of El Tio, in accepting the gift the people also had to accept the strings attached:  the destruction of the village and the loss of their entire way of life.

Thanks for sharing this fascinating post with us.
I am looking forward to reading The Gift of Eli Tio 

Now lets meet the authors and learn more about the memoir.

Karen Gans and  Larry Buchanan

Larry Buchanan earned his PhD in Economic Geology in 1979 and taught university-level geology for several years, but his love of the field led him to gold and silver prospecting in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In 2006, he won the coveted Thayer Lindsley Award for the San Cristobal silver discovery. Dr. Buchanan has published a dozen scientific works and is a sought-after speaker at international conferences and college campuses.

Karen Gans earned her Master s degree in Early Childhood Development and has thirty-five years of experience as an educator, counselor, and consultant. She taught English in the Quechua village while the couple lived in Bolivia. Ms. Gans and her husband have four children and two grandchildren and reside in Ashland, Oregon.

The Gift of El Tio
by Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans
Publisher:
Publication date:
Genre: Memoir/non-fiction
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon

Larry, a world-renowned geologist, discovers an enormous deposit of silver beneath a remote Quechua village in Bolivia and unwittingly fulfills a 400-year-old prophecy that promised a life of wealth for the villagers. Karen, a specialist in child development, is deeply disturbed by the prospect of displacing the people in order to open a mine. She challenges Larry to leave the comforts of home and move to the village in order to bear witness to the massive change his discovery will spark. Thus begins the couple's life-changing, ten-year journey into the Quechua community, their evolution from outsiders to trusted friends. Then part two of the ancient prophecy is disclosed to them, and they are shocked by the truth of its predictions: alienation, despair, even cannibalism.

Treasure Hunter by W.C. Jameson

"There are not many left, we dreamers and wanderers...We are a breed of men addicted to danger, adventure, and the quest." Thus begins W.C. Jameson's account of one intrepid man's efforts to find the lost treasures of North America and beyond. Jameson and his partners piece together centuries-old histories through documents, maps, and stories passed down from one generation to the next, facing life-threatening danger time and again. These riveting stories, told with humor and candor, are a portal to another time, and are a testament to the spirited independence of risk-takers, a few of whom still exist in what we think of as the modern age.(Synopsis from Goodreads)

Treasure Hunter by W.C. Jameson, is a fascinating look at the adventures of a modern day treasure hunter. I have always enjoyed watching and reading about history, conspiracies, mysteries and lost treasure.This book contains all of these elements.  This memoir offers a close hand look at the challenges, danger and excitement that treasure hunters face.

W. C. Jameson’s is an award winning author with an impressive biography. He has over 70 books, 1500 essays and 300 songs published. He consulted for the television show Unsolved Mysteries and was an advisor for the film, National Treasure.  He has been interviewed by the History Channel, PBS, Travel Channel and Dateline. The list of credits to his name are impressive.  I would love to sit down and have a drink with this man; just think of the stories he could share.

In his memoir Treasure Hunter, Jameson shares with us his treasure hunting adventures. I absolutely immersed myself in this memoir.  Jameson’s writing style grabs you from page one. I immediately felt like I was a part of his posse in search of lost treasure. Each chapter depicts a specific quest and the events that occurred.  Jameson and his team have been shot at, bitten, threatened and have looked death in the eye.  The wealth they obtained and the treasure they sometimes were forced to leave behind was fascinating. The bits and pieces of history entwined in the stories were interesting and I found myself sharing these adventures with my family and friends. 

One of my favorite chapters was, Guadalupe Mountain Gold. Jameson shares with us his first treasure hunt. He conveys the tale in such a way, that you can feel yourself lying there with him between the strawberries bushes, climbing the hills and getting up close and personal with a snake. Another adventure I enjoyed was, The Curse. Jameson shares details about a group of young men who found a cave with stacks of gold bars. The three men became violently ill. Two of them ended up dying. The third convinced of a curse, shared these details with Jameson. Jameson and his friends set out to find the site and the tale that unfolds will mesmerize you.  I actually read this one aloud to my eighteen year old son, and he sat captivated by this tale.  

Treasure Hunter delivers history, adventure and a glimpse at the man who loves the quest, perhaps more than the treasure. I highly recommend Treasure Hunter to fans of quests, mysteries, history and adventure. I encourage you to check out more of W.C. Jameson’s work. Treasure Hunter is the perfect coffee table book; as each tale can be read in one sitting. This would also make a great gift for non-fiction readers on your holiday shopping list.

I want to thank the publicist for providing this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review. 

I gave this book 5 coffee cups of out 5. 

Buy here: Amazon or here: B&N

Author's Website: W.C. Jameson