CANR

• Del Rio - 2021 She Writes Press, Berkeley, CA
• The Serpent Bearer - 2025 She Writes Press, Berkeley, CA

• Jane Rosenthal website - https://janerosenthal.com

  Jane’s Biography
  Former award winning radio journalist, poet and teacher, Jane Rosenthal lived for over a decade on a horse and cattle ranch in the Sierra mountains of California about 3500 feet above the Central Valley where her novel Del Rio is set and where she finally fulfilled her dream of being a western cowgirl.

  Author Jane Rosenthal recognized with American Fiction Awards
  american fiction winner award
  Jane recently was singled out by the American Book Fest’s annual American Fiction Awards for her book. She was recognized in six different categories, winning two and placing in the finals for an additional four.

  Winner
  For her book, Del Rio, Jane was the award-winner in two categories:

  american fiction finalist award
  Mystery/Suspense: Multicultural & Diverse
  Thriller: Legal

  Jane Rosenthal ©Gabriella Marks Photo
  Now having relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, she lives in an area called in the native Tewa language ‘where the heart water meets the canyon’. From there she can be found exploring the many cultural offerings her state is famous for — Ghost Ranch, the Taos Pueblo, the Santuario at Chimayo, the ancestral cliff dwellings of Bandelier, or just relaxing in the hot springs of Ojo Caliente where the early conquistadors were said to have taken the waters.

  She loves wandering around the beautiful Santa fe Plaza and discovering stunning examples of Native American art in the many old shops that surround it. On Friday nights, she takes the gallery walk up Canyon Road and is always inspired by the exciting artists’ exhibits. She and her husband often end up at their favorite place, the historic watering hole, El Farol.

  Come winter she heads to Old Mexico and to the many pueblos magicos like Oaxaca, San Cristobal, Patzcuaro and San Miguel de Allende where she attends the San Miguel Literary Festival held annually in that city. She always stops off in Mexico City to visit friends and soak up the culture of exciting and vibrant CDMX where her first novel Palace of the Blue Butterfly takes place.

  Most of the time, though, you’ll find her in her office with its many windows overlooking the Georgia O’Keeffe landscape around her and writing those novels that have been kicking around in her head all these many years.

• Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb - https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/2025/03/q-with-jane-rosenthal.html?m=1

  Wednesday, March 12, 2025
  Q&A with Jane Rosenthal

  Photo by Gabriella Marks

  Jane Rosenthal is the author of the new novel The Serpent Bearer. She also has written the novel Del Rio. She lives in New Mexico.

  Q: What inspired you to write The Serpent Bearer, and how did you create your character Solly Meisner?

  A: The inspiration for my novel The Serpent Bearer came from my own life, from the people I grew up around and the place of my childhood--- the south, the Piedmont area of North Carolina, to be exact, right on the South Carolina border.

  That landscape--- the red clay, the verdant green, rolling hills, the cotton and soybean fields, the haunting whistles of freight trains rolling through the longleaf pines at night---is as much a part of me as my eye color and height.

  I always wanted to locate a story in that place of childhood memory. In fact, a former literary agent once told me that I should “exploit my southern background,” and by that she meant write a story about some recently divorced woman who retreats to her beach house on the Outer Banks and falls for the hunky contactor who fixes her screen doors.

  There was just one problem. My South, in spite of the shared landscape, was not the same south as those who owned beach homes and antebellum mansions.

  Why? Because I’m Jewish, and I grew up in the south in the time of Jim Crow. There were places White folks went, places that Black folks could go, and places Jews could go, places Jews could live. That was the way the world was back then---segregated.

  I basically grew up in a ghetto, a community created by Jews who came south in the rag trade like my father, Jews who were lucky enough to escape Europe with the help of the Hebrew International Aid Society like my parents’ friends, and Jews who’d been there for generations like my father’s poker buddies, running small department stores, small hosiery mills, trucking companies, keeping a low profile, keeping to themselves.

  I used to love hearing the grownups tell stories of what the South was like when they first arrived in the ‘30s and ‘40s, how there was a circuit riding rabbi, how they had to bring their Sabbath wine down from New York because the South was dry, and also, I’m guessing here, because the wine drinkers were mostly European with elevated tastes.

  I remember one family friend, a Polish refugee, laughing, saying “I am now bootlegger” as he and my father brought cases of wine into the house. The undercurrent of the joke was that he was the son of wealthy Warsaw diamond merchants, who were all dead, and he was the lucky one--- a bootlegger.

  I still hear their voices, their laughter, and I wanted to capture that world, closed and intimate and always a bit precarious if I’m being honest. Could it be that Jews, segregated or not, were really safe anywhere, even in America?

  I felt an urgency to write this novel because I may be one of the last of a generation that remembers who those people were and how they fought for a freer, better world than the one they experienced.

  They fought in Spain, and some never came back; they fought in Europe and the South Pacific; they fought for Civil Rights in this country, and until recently I thought they’d won.

  Between you and me, I’m going to bet, like my protagonist Solly would, that they still had the winning hand. They were people of great character and conviction. I wanted--no, I needed--to bring them and what they stood for, back to life. I didn’t want them ever to die.

  Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

  A: To make a coherent story out of lives as complex and sprawling as the lives of my parents and the people in their world, to write a novel that would encompass all they had lived through in the 20th century, well, that was a hugely daunting task, one that would take research and travel, all of which I did.

  I studied the history of fascism in the ‘30s and ‘40s and support for Nazis in this country, especially in the South during that time; I learned about radio transmission and code breaking, and about the relief work of the Mexican ambassador to France during World War II, Gilberto Bosques, who rescued many Jews and brought them to Mexico.

  I travelled all over the Yucatan and Campeche on a special tour designed by the company Journey Mexico to help me with research. I stayed in places my characters would have stayed and walked in their footsteps. Writing this novel will always remain one of the highlights of my life.

  The work of Ambassador Gilberto Bosques was a wonderful surprise. I knew that many Jews who were prevented from entering the United States because of the quotas went to Mexico.

  What I did not know was that Ambassador Bosques bought two large houses in the south of France where he sheltered Jews and other refugees before securing safe passage to Mexico for thousands of them, all with the permission of Mexico’s president at the time, Lazaro Cardenas. Bosques is known as the Mexican Schindler.

  Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

  A: I had absolutely no idea where I was going with this novel or how it would end. Frankly, The Serpent Bearer had an inauspicious start. I usually begin a project with the voice of a character talking, guiding me into the story.

  But this novel began simply with an image of a woman standing in front of my protagonist Solly Meisner’s office door holding a basket of peaches. It was nighttime, 1941, Jim Crow South, and she was a Black woman taking a risk being where she was. Why? Who was she? What was the urgency? That was all I had to go on.

  Some parts of this novel are absolutely true and come from the stories I heard growing up; some of the novel comes from my early memories of the way the Southern towns and landscapes looked in the ‘50s, and some of the tale I lived through.

  It was as if I put all my memories, all my research, all my travels, feelings, experiences into the blender of my heart and soul, pushed a button, and created this magic elixir.

  Even though this magic potion became a spy thriller with danger always present, I knew from the very beginning of the first drafts that I didn’t want to have the question--does the protagonist Solly Meisner survive--drive the narrative.

  I’m not giving anything away to tell you now, as I do in the second chapter, that he does. The question throughout the novel is how. How did he survive? How did any of the characters survive this frightening time?

  I needed to answer that question for myself, and I hoped I might answer it for my readers. How do we survive? What really matters? Writing The Serpent Bearer gave me an insight, an answer, and I hope that when you read this book, it will for you, as well.

  Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

  A: When I began this novel, I didn’t have much to go on, but I did know the title--The Serpent Bearer. The name comes from the Greek myth of Ophiuchus, a myth in which a shepherd witnesses a miracle: he watches a serpent heal another wounded serpent with a leaf. It’s a myth about bringing the dead back to life, exactly what I wanted to do.

  How I went from a blurry image of a woman with a basket of peaches, a title, and a question--what was she doing there?--tells you all you need to know about the magic of writing, how just a few snippets can take you on a magnificent journey, how following them leads you into enchantment, and can for a while bring loved ones back, make them alive once again on the page.

  Q: What are you working on now?

  A: A Cold War spy novel set partly in the fictional town of Pennington, South Carolina, I created in The Serpent Bearer.

  The plot revolves around the secrets of a mysterious group of bohemians who landed there after Black Mountain College was shuttered in the mid-‘50s and the consequences of those secrets on members of the group and others.

  Q: Anything else we should know?

  A: Just one more thing. I published my first novel in my 70s, the second novel in my mid-70s, and I’m working on another one, which I hope to publish in my late 70s. It is never too late to do what you love!

  --Interview with Deborah Kalb

• The IndieView - https://www.theindieview.com/2025/03/11/indieview-with-jane-rosenthal-author-of-the-serpent-bearer/

  IndieView with Jane Rosenthal, author of The Serpent Bearer
  Posted on March 11, 2025 by admin

  It started out as an image: It’s night, a woman is standing in front of my father’s office and I have the sense that she is in some peril. Why? That’s the question I started with. Why is she there?

  Jane Rosenthal – 11 March 2025

  The Back Flap
  It’s 1941 in a small Jewish community in South Carolina, and Solly Meisner, a recently returned Spanish Civil War veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, has barely settled in after his return home when he risks his life after discovering powerful Nazi sympathizers are working behind the scenes in his new hometown. Determined to stop them, he signs on with a newly formed U.S. spy agency. His first assignment: travel to the Yucatan and infiltrate a group of German spies and collaborators—including Estelle, a beautiful British woman he fell in love with in Spain, and whom he fears may have betrayed him.

  In the Yucatan, Solly encounters a band of European exiles, not all of them who they claim to be. With his contacts dropping like flies, danger lurks at every turn. But with the Nazis only a few hundred miles from the U.S. coast and making plans for an invasion, there is no time to lose, and Solly trusts no one to track them down and stop them but himself. If he fails, the world he once knew will be gone forever—and the people he loves with it.

  About the book
  What is the book about?

  The The Serpent Bearer is a World War Two spy thriller, full of buried family secrets and with a cast of fascinating characters whose lives converge at a dangerous moment in history.

  When did you start writing the book?

  August 2020. It was the middle of Covid. The Serpent Bearer is my Covid novel.

  How long did it take you to write it?

  About three years, which is long for me.

  Where did you get the idea from?

  I knew that I wanted to write about my parents and their milieu, a group of southern Jews, Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighters who managed to make it out alive, Jewish survivors of Nazi controlled Europe, people I grew up around who found themselves for one reason or another in the Jim Crow south.

  Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

  See the answer to question number two. Yes, sort of. The story was a bit big and unwieldy in the beginning. I really cannot tell you how the novel came to be. It just emerged out of all the things I’d known or felt most of my life. It started out as an image: It’s night, a woman is standing in front of my father’s office and I have the sense that she is in some peril. Why? That’s the question I started with. Why is she there?

  I have no idea why this image came to me, if I had witnessed something like this as a child or what, but the image was so clear. She is standing in front of my father’s yarn warehouse, a Quonset hut on Atando Avenue in Charlotte NC. They are now called the historic Quonset huts of Atando Avenue, and I think they are bars or something. But in the fifties, they were in the middle of nowhere. That’s what I began with. How it went in the direction it did I will never know. Writing this book was a little like river rafting. I was just trying to steer the story as it came to me.

  What came easily?

  All of the characters, their dialogue and so on came easily. What was hard was putting all their stories into a coherent whole, considering the span of time and the places I wanted to cover, the whole history.

  Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

  All writers borrow, and I am no exception! For years, people told me I needed to write about my father, and while Solly is not my father, the vibe is totally my Dad, brave, daring, difficult! An uncle of mine was in Spain during the Civil War, more in a journalistic capacity, but my parents did have a friend whose brother fought in Spain and didn’t return. I grew up knowing that the war in Spain was “The Good Fight”, that we could have stopped Hitler there. The fictional town of Pennington is based on stories my father and his friends told about coming down south in the rag trade, what the south was like then when Jews were only allowed to go into certain places and the Jewish community had no temple only a circuit riding rabbi. There is even a Life Magazine article about that rabbi!

  We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

  I read constantly from the poetry of Louise Gluck to big, wonderful novels like The Goldfinch or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I love the crime novels of Raymond Chandler and the books of Tana French. The writer that got me started though was Elizabeth George and a class I took with her at Books Passage in Larkspur California many years ago. She set me on this path.

  Do you have a target reader?

  I love to tell stories, so my ideal reader is someone who wants to get lost in a good yarn, but a tale with depth and history. I want a reader who likes to go on unforgettable journeys.

  About Writing
  Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

  I have to mentally wander around in my stories before I start writing. Each novel starts with some image, and I keep asking myself questions about that picture, the person or people in it, until I hear the first sentence. Usually that first sentence gets me off and running. In The Serpent Bearer there was a fair amount of research, as well, about code breakers in the US, WW2 radio equipment, about Nazis in Mexico, about how European Jewish exiles got to Mexico with the help of Mexico’s ambassador to France at the time, Gilberto Bosques. I also hired the tour company Journey Mexico to drive me around the Yucatan and Campeche to places like the ones I write about. The trip they planned for me was invaluable.

  Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

  Yes, I do in a way. After I have an idea of some of the characters, I begin to write scenes with them in it to see what comes up, what I can learn about them. After that, I begin outlining scenes. If a scene arrives in my head fully formed, I write the whole scene. My outlines go through many drafts.

  Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

  A bit of both. I hire a professional editor and we go through several iterations until the story becomes as clear on the page as it is in my head.

  Did you hire a professional editor

  Yes. I need another trained pair of eyes on the manuscript to tell me if I’ve done what I set out to do.

  Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping? N

  I need quiet or at the very least, background noise that doesn’t require my attention. I wrote my novel Del Rio in part in Mexico, and the background noise was traffic!

  About Publishing
  Did you submit your work to Agents?

  Yes.

  What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

  Well, after my second agent and I couldn’t see eye to eye, I sort of wandered in the wilderness a bit. During that time, I attended the San Miguel Literary Festival and first heard about She Writes press through an agent there.

  Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

  She Writes does an incredible job. I love them and feel so grateful they took me on. Julie Metz is one of their cover designers and she designed both my books covers. I couldn’t be more pleased.

  Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

  I am working with a wonderful team of publicists at BookSparks and couldn’t do this without them. I also have a marketer Michael Caroff who does website and social media stuff. I am a klutz at that sort of thing and he does a beautiful job.

  Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

  Do it! There are wonderful classes available, fabulous freelance editors, formatters, cover designers. My strongest suggestion is to hire an editor who really understands what you want to do. You need to bounce your work off of someone skilled in listening.

  About You
  Where did you grow up?

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  Where do you live now?

  Santa Fe, New Mexico

  What would you like readers to know about you?

  In my next life, I hope to live in Paris and be a fragrance designer. Everyone is surprised when I say that! Well, not the Paris part.

  What are you working on now?

  Another thriller! This one is set during the Cold War.! have always been fascinated by the artists who came to Black Mountain College in the mountains of North Carolina in the 30s,40s, and 50s—Helen Frankenthaler, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Charles Olson, Ruth Asawa, the Jewish refugees— all Beatniks before that was even a thing. One particular (fictional) character has appeared to me. I’m going to follow her where she leads.

  End of Interview:

• Elizabeth Rynecki - https://www.elizabethrynecki.com/jane-rosenthal/

  Before turning her hand to novel writing, Jane Rosenthal was as a radio journalist, a bilingual reporter and finally as an English and creative writing teacher.

  Twitter: @MexicoNovels

  Instagram: @JaneRosenthalAuthor

  Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?

  I speak Spanish as I lived in Mexico City in high school and have continued to spend a great deal of time there off and on. Lots of important firsts happened for me in that language— first time in a large cosmopolitan city (the Paris of Latin America, as my mother called it) first love, first political demonstration, first tacos, you name it. Do I think differently in that language? Absolutely! In fact, I feel different in that language. I’m more open, express my thoughts and feelings with greater passion. I don’t know whether it’s because the minute I push through the doors of customs at Benito Juarez airport I find myself in touch with the teenage girl I was, or whether it’s the language. At any rate, I relax into Spanish like a comfortable sweater. It’s a language that feels like home to me. Since, my books take place partly in Mexico, the language, and everything about culture that is contained in the language, influences my writing

  What piece of clothing tells an interesting story about your life?

  Not only does speaking Spanish make me feel different, being in Mexico affects my wardrobe choices, too. Once there, I always wear my rebozos, the shawls that I have been collecting for years. The one you see in my author photo comes from Santa Maria del Rio in San Luis Potosi, one of the places famous for its silk rebozos. I actually bought this one in Oaxaca after visiting the artist Rodolfo Morales in his studio in Ocotlan. The bus dropped me off near the big market next to the Zocolo in Oaxaca city. I was wandering around looking at this and that, and one of the vendors, perceiving that I was knowledgeable about these things, went behind a curtain and came out with a box that held this beautiful purple rebozo. I’ve always cherished this one as a memory of that day in Ocotlan with a brilliant artist.

  Do I collect anything? If so, what and for how long?

  I have been collecting Mexican art and folk art since the sixties. I have several works from the artist, Rodolfo Morales, that I mentioned above, and along with rebozos, I collect Mexican silver jewelry from famous jewelry designers of the forties and fifties—the golden age of Mexican silver jewelry— artists like Matilde Poulat and Hector Aguilar. The silver necklace I’m wearing in the author photo is made by William Spratling, an American who came to Mexico in the thirties, created the silver department in Sanborns and trained many extraordinary artisans in Taxco. I’m always on the hunt for these iconic pieces of jewelry, created during that exciting time in Mexican art.

  Is there a work of art that you love? Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

  There are many works of art that I love. A few years ago, in the pre-Covid era, I was in Paris at the Orsay and found myself moved to tears by Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night. It really took my breath away that I was literally standing one foot from that magnificent painting and able to see every exquisite brush stroke. But since I am such a Mexicophile, on the same trip to Paris, I also attended an exhibit of Mexican Modernism at the Musee de l’Orangerie of the great paintings of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Siqueiros and so on. All that being said, the work of art I love the most, is Frida’s Casa Azul— her home. I was lucky enough to see it before she became a cult figure and crowds descended on the place. Every domestic, homey, quotidian place and thing in that house Frida had made into art. She turned her whole, painful, difficult life into art. It’s the way I hope, at the end of the day, to have lived my life.

  Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?

  Actually, my novels inspire my cooking! Invariably, when I am writing about Mexico, I will start craving food unique to the region I’m writing about. In Del Rio, part of the action takes place on the Pacific west coast, so spicy shrimp in any form— soups, tacos, you name it—was on the menu. Now, the setting for the book I’m writing is the Yucatan, so the food from the Yucatan peninsula is inspiring me. I’m re-visiting Diana Kennedy’s famous cookbook, The Art of Mexican Cooking, a must-read for someone who wants to know about Mexico’s World Heritage designated cuisine. Now, I’m off to the kitchen to make huevos motulenos with chiltomate sauce—a super easy dish of a fried corn tortilla, refried black beans, topped with a fried egg, covered with spicy tomato sauce and sprinkled with crumbled queso fresco. All you need is an ice-cold beer with lime and the sound of the Caribbean sea lapping at the shore!

  Published May 27, 2021
  By Author's Answer
  Categorized as Author's Answer

• Thriller Fix - https://thrillerfix.com/interview-legal/talking-thrillers-with-author-jane-rosenthal-del-rio/

  Talking Thrillers with Author Jane Rosenthal: Del Rio

  Former award winning radio journalist, poet and teacher, Jane Rosenthal lived for over a decade on a horse and cattle ranch in the Sierra mountains of California about 3500 feet above the Central Valley where her novel Del Rio is set and where she finally fulfilled her dream of being a western cowgirl.

  Now having relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, she lives in an area called in the native Tewa language ‘where the heart water meets the canyon’. From there she can be found exploring the many cultural offerings her state is famous for — Ghost Ranch, the Taos Pueblo, the Santuario at Chimayo, the ancestral cliff dwellings of Bandelier, or just relaxing in the hot springs of Ojo Caliente where the early conquistadors were said to have taken the waters.

  She loves wandering around the beautiful Santa Fe Plaza and discovering stunning examples of Native American art in the many old shops that surround it. On Friday nights, she takes the gallery walk up Canyon Road and is always inspired by the exciting artists’ exhibits. She and her husband often end up at their favorite place, the historic watering hole, El Farol.

  TFx: Where did you come up with the idea for this book, and what can you tell us about the plot?
  Rosenthal: I remember exactly where I came up with the beginning of the plot for the book, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was driving back from a town called Visalia, the county seat of Tulare County in California’s Central Valley. It was a windy day, bright and sunny, almost too bright as California can seem sometimes, especially in the valley. As I left the town proper and headed into the vast sea of orange groves, I saw a young farmworker on my right, walking down a dirt road, dust blowing all around.

  He was reading a letter and needed both hands to hold onto the pages in the wind. As writers do, I imagined a whole story about the letter, why it was important, how homesick he might be, and so on. I watched as he went into the orange groves and seemed almost swallowed up by trees. I found myself thinking that you could go into those groves and never come out.

  I mentioned that to a friend who’d grown up in the valley and said something like,” Wow, you could get murdered in there and they’d never find you.” To which she just shrugged and said, ”Happens all the time. Gangs, cartel, you know.” That was sort of the germ of one of the crimes that occurs in the book. I used to pour over local newspapers to see if my friend was just exaggerating, and sure enough, bodies were often discovered in those groves.

  TFx: How did you choose the setting(s)?
  Rosenthal: When my husband and I retired and bought our ranch in the Sierras, I intended to write a mystery series set in several different areas of Mexico, a place where I have lived and to which I travel often.

  Each novel would give a sense of the different Mexicos, as it were, from artsy, sophisticated Mexico City in my first book Palace of the Blue Butterfly to the coastal ambience of Mexico’s west coast that you see in Del Rio. I wrote part of the novel in our condo in Puerto Vallarta, but one day back in the states, I was standing in a very long line at the bank---it was a Saturday, payday for farmworkers--- and I realized I was the only English speaker in the line.

  It hit me suddenly that I where I lived in the Central Valley was practically the west coast of Mexico. Right then and there, the first line of the novel came to me: Fletcher wanted me to meet him at the Starlight Lounge, an old roadhouse set on a bluff above the San Joaquin River a few miles south of town. After I deposited my checks at the bank, I hopped in my car, drove up the mountain, charged into my office and literally wrote the first chapter. I just followed my characters wherever they led me after that, which turned out to be a pretty, wild and dangerous journey.

  TFx: What are you reading now, and what good books have you read lately?
  Rosenthal: I was just thinking about the things that have gotten me through this pandemic. They are: cosmos (Ina Garten’s recipe) served in iced martini glasses, the Italian TV series ‘Detective Montalbano’ based on the wonderful detective novels of Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri (Ah, to be on the coast of Sicily again…sigh), and the historical WW2 espionage novels set in Berlin by the British writer David Downing. I’m very much looking forward to beginning Downing’s WW1 series, and I’m starting with Jack of Spies, which is set in England in an era when spying was considered ungentlemanly. It looks full of intriguing characters.

  TFx: What’s next for the series?
  Rosenthal: I’m continuing with the idea of writing mysteries set in different locations in Mexico. The novel that I am writing now takes place in and around Merida, Mexico. The setting (well, one of them, at least) is a run-down henequen plantation in the jungle outside of Merida. Merida has a Caribbean, international, French feel, very different from the west coast of Mexico or Mexico City for that matter. Consequently, the characters, the people who gravitate to the Yucatan are different, as are the crimes they commit. Stay tuned for some thrilling armchair travel!

Jane Rosenthal; DEL RIO; She Writes Press (Fiction: Thriller) 16.95 ISBN: 9781647420550

Byline: Carolina Ciucci

Del Rio is a suspenseful international thriller involving two countries, multiple crimes, and a district attorney driven by the need to succeed.

Jane Rosenthal's fast thriller Del Rio tackles questions of justice, oppression, and racism as a district attorney rushes to find her lost brother and solve a series of murders.

When Callie moves back to Del Rio, California, it is with clear goals in mind: she wants to be the best district attorney possible, and to work her way toward a Senate seat. But a series of startling events, starting with the discovery of a dismembered child, send her organized life into a tailspin. Upon discovering that her brother-in-law, a state senator, may be concealing criminal activity, Callie heads to Mexico. Once there, she meets Nathan, a widower whose job puts him in the same path of danger. He's a confused, sometimes passive, partner in her investigation.

In this complex and atmospheric story, plot twists and surprises are frequent. One character buys a child when they are unable to adopt one; instead of turning a pedophile into the authorities, someone initiates a blackmail scheme. The characters exist in a permanent state of tension as Callie's race to solve a series of crimes moves forward. Still, though some story lines are dropped for long periods of time, all are returned to with care. Themes of racial injustice arise because the book's victims are almost all children of color; Callie reckons with such realities, as well as with her own unacknowledged racism, which is apparent in some descriptions of Mexican, Chinese, and Romani communities.

There are instances in which characters behave in ways that are contrary to their stated personalities. Callie's brother, Mike, is presented as a "do-gooder," though his later actions belie this. But the characters' conversations are realistic, from everyday exchanges between Callie and her friends, to a grief-stricken speech from a Mexican woman about the girls trafficked out of her country.

By the book's end, all loose threads have been addressed, and all possible holes in the story have been closed. Though some of Callie's final decisions are baffling, she ends the book on a note of hope, having grown and found closure when it comes to the questions that haunted her.

Del Rio is a suspenseful international thriller involving two countries, multiple crimes, and a district attorney in search of success.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Foreword Magazine, Inc.
https://www.forewordmagazine.net/clarion/reviews.aspx
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Source Citation
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Ciucci, Carolina. "Del Rio." Clarion Reviews, 20 Jan. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649606256/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=12d8654d. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Rosenthal, Jane DEL RIO She Writes Press (Fiction Nonfiction) $None 5, 18 ISBN: 978-1-64742-055-0

In Rosenthal’s thriller, a California district attorney delves into a mystery involving her brother-in-law.

Callie McCall gave up private practice in San Francisco to become district attorney in her hometown of Del Rio in California’s run-down Central Valley. Her plan was to establish herself in the region and then run for higher office. But when a severed body part of a teenage migrant worker is found in a local grove, Callie realizes that her plans will have to wait. The grove is owned by her brother-in-law, Jim Fletcher, who also holds the state Senate seat she seeks. The more she looks into his business practices, the dirtier he appears, so she secretly follows him to a resort in western Mexico, where she meets Nathan Bernstein, an innocent caught up in a dangerous racket. He’s a widower from a wealthy San Francisco family who’s been hired to lead a bird-watching tour at the resort that Callie’s investigating. She soon discovers that Jim is involved in the smuggling of children—a business that gets him killed and puts Callie and Nathan in danger as traffickers follow them north. The strength of Rosenthal’s novel is in how she lets her two main characters evolve. At the beginning of the story, Callie wonders how her new post can aid her political ambitions, but by the end, she’s more concerned about how she can help others; meanwhile, Nathan gets beyond his debilitating grief and steps back into the world. Most of the characters that they encounter live in moral shades of gray, viewing the world through the lens of their own self-interest. Rosenthal also colorfully brings the Central Valley region to life as well as a criminal underground that Callie and, especially, Nathan are ill-equipped to comprehend. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking look at heinous crimes and their effects on larger society.

An intense tale of a self-involved attorney rediscovering her sense of compassion.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Rosenthal, Jane: DEL RIO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A656696339/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32864c9a. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Del Rio

Jane Rosenthal

She Writes Press

www.shewritespress.com

9781647420550, $16.95, PB, 280pp

https://www.amazon.com/Del-Rio-Novel-Jane-Rosenthal/dp/1647420555

Synopsis: Del Rio, California, a once-thriving Central Valley farm town, is now filled with run-down Dollar Stores, llanterias, carnicerias, and shabby mini-marts that sell one-way bus tickets straight to Tijuana on the Flecha Amarilla line. It's a place you drive through with windows up and doors locked, especially at night--a place the locals call Cartel Country.

For local District Attorney Callie McCall, her dying hometown of Del Rio is the perfect place to launch a political career and try to make a difference.

But when the dismembered body of a migrant teen is found in one of Del Rio's surrounding citrus groves, Callie faces a career make-or-break case that takes her on a dangerous journey down the violent west coast of Mexico, to a tropical paradise hiding a terrible secret, and finally back home again, where her determination to find the killer pits her against the wealthiest, most politically connected, most ruthless farming family in California: her own.

Critique: Showcasing author Jane Rosenthal's exceptionally impressive flair for originality and complete mastery of the crime thriller genre, "Del Rio" is a well crafted mystery replete with unexpected plot twists right down to the finish. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Contemporary Mystery/Suspense collections, it should be noted for the personal reading lists of female sleuth fans that "Del Rio" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.49).

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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"Del Rio." Wisconsin Bookwatch, June 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A710803419/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2de07cab. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Jane Rosenthal; THE SERPENT BEARER; She Writes Press (Fiction: Historical) ISBN: 9781647428501

Byline: Caroline Goldberg Igra

Filled with spies and individuals who are willing to fight to the death, The Serpent Bearer is an elaborate, exciting World War II romantic thriller.

In Jane Rosenthal's historical novel The Serpent Bearer, a veteran has thrilling experiences -- and a splash of romance -- as a spy.

Solly, a Jewish Spanish Civil War veteran, returns to South Carolina, consoling himself over the loss of the woman he loved and an entire brigade of soldiers with whom he feels he should have perished. Then Solly is enlisted to join a new United States spy agency whose goal is to ensure that the Germans do not extend their control beyond Europe and take over the United States. Appalled at the discovery of Nazi sympathizers in his hometown and doing little else save gambling, he accepts the assignment.

Most of the action takes place in 1941 in Havana and various locations in Mexico, but there are quite a few flashbacks to an earlier period spent in Madrid. Jumps far into the future to consider Solly's legacy also occur. In his struggle to accomplish his goal, Solly is joined by a large cast of characters, some propagating the spread of Nazism in the Americas and some trying to stop it. Added to the intrigue is an old romance and the chance of a new one.

The narration alternates among four people: Solly himself; Estelle, the woman whose trail he lost in Spain and whom he still pines over; Grace, the Hollywood screenwriter who is enlisted to organize the details of Solly's latest position as spy, to whom he becomes attracted; and Izzy, Solly's daughter, a professor of Mayan history in North Carolina. The shifting narrators add their differing perspectives, enriching the work, but they also lead to a disjunctive timeline. The vast jumps between time periods also muddle the book's progression early on. Further, some characterizations are archetypal without delving deeper, as with the Jewish character who escaped the concentration camps, the British character who sympathizes with the Germans, and the womanizing German character.

Fascinating impressions of Mexico and Cuba flesh out the period, though, with each scene and location described with emotional resonance. The prose is lucid and colloquial, sometimes moving at a steady crawl and at others racing ahead. There is a tremendous amount of action in scenes filled with spies and individuals who are willing to fight to the death and kill for their goals. The tale's cloak-and-dagger moments are elaborate but exciting up to the bitter end.

The Serpent Bearer is a gripping thriller set amid World War II history.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Foreword Magazine, Inc.
https://www.forewordmagazine.net/clarion/reviews.aspx
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Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Igra, Caroline Goldberg. "The Serpent Bearer." Clarion Reviews, 5 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A815534180/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4bb9d3e6. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Rosenthal, Jane THE SERPENT BEARER She Writes Press (Fiction Fiction) $17.99 3, 11 ISBN: 9781647428501

Rosenthal presents a World War II-era adventure novel, set mostly in the Yucatán jungle in the 1940s.

Early on, a frame story introduces an elderly Solly Meisner living in North Carolina in 2008, exasperating both his daughter, Izzy, and his full-time caregiver with his stubborn independence. During an episode of dementia, he begins to reveal long-kept secrets about his past that lead Izzy, a retired archaeologist, to question everything she think she knows about her family. Most of the story, however, takes place in 1941, in the months before the invasion of Pearl Harbor and shortly after Solly has, by chance, survived a bombing that targeted his band of brigadistas fighting in the Spanish Civil War. A U.S. government agent with the Office of the Coordinator of Information sends Solly to spy on suspected Nazi activity in Mexico, blackmailing him into doing so by threatening to expose Solly's record as a Communist Party member and revolutionary fighter in Spain. The young lawyer accepts, but he's certain that the mission will end with his death. In a dilapidated hacienda in the Yucatán, he meets three other Jewish exiles who've fled horrors in Europe, some bored expats, and, eventually, Nazi operatives. In addition to chapters from the perspectives of Solly and Izzy, readers get scenes in diary entries of Solly's aristocratic ex-lover, Estelle, and from the point of view of Grace Weintraub, a Hollywood script doctor. Each narrative voice is distinctive, and the characters and settings throughout are beautifully drawn, from care facilities to remote hotels: "The first-floor patio was abuzz with chatter, a flurry of waiters running around like mad, supplying distraught guests with mineral water or spirits." The various mysteries unfold at a gratifying pace, and the frame story generates tension between the past and present; readers get action sequences worthy of 1940s Hollywood, as well as an examination of the lingering effects of past choices.

A consistently compelling war story that expertly balances multiple plotlines and perspectives.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Rosenthal, Jane: THE SERPENT BEARER." Kirkus Reviews, 19 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A817953799/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a1f6c079. Accessed 1 July 2025.

The Serpent Bearer

Jane Rosenthal | She Writes Press

328p, trade paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-647-42850-1

Uncertain loyalties, globe-trotting suspense, and diverse characters with rich backgrounds power Rosenthal's second novel (after Del Rio), an intimate World War II thriller of secrets, exiles, and high personal stakes. Devastated by the loss of Estelle, the mysterious woman he loved, Solly Meisner is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War trying to find a place for himself in the Jewish community of Pennington, South Carolina, in 1941, though he's dismayed by the discrimination that he witnesses and experiences. Solly is surprised when a recruiter from the Coordinating Office of Information, FDR's newly formed spy agency, blackmails him into a mission with the threat of exposing Solly's Communist past.

Solly sets off for the jungles of the Yucatan, discovering a "ragtag group of European exiles," not all of whom he's sure he can trust, but also Nazis too close to the Americas and some hard truths about his own life and loves. By the end, Estelle--a classic noir-ish antiheroine of opaque loyalties--won't be the only person dearto him whose fate he's desperate to discover. Estelle's blend of glamor and hardboiled attitude is memorable ("falling in love looks a bit like this," she tells Solly, grounding out a cigarette with her heel), and sharply penned entries from her journal are a highlight in a novel concerned with the choices women faced in the past: "convent, motherhood, monotony, or madness," as she puts it to Solly.

Hovering over all this, of course, are what Solly thinks of as "the ghosts of Warsaw" and his certainty that if the COI fails to stop the Nazis "his parents' days of relaxing in their backyard in Cleveland would be over." While the breadth of settings and flashbacks add a rich historical dimension, readers must stay alert to keep up with the fast pace and shifting perspectives among characters with secrets. The payoff is a textured portrayal of a man grappling with his loyalties, ideals, and the darker shades of wartime alliances. It's an engrossing journey.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Serpent Bearer." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 47, 9 Dec. 2024, p. 127. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A820017377/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1d358dee. Accessed 1 July 2025.

The Serpent Bearer, She Writes Press, Rosenthal, Jane, 17.99 (328p), 9781647428501

Genre: Fiction/General Fiction (including literary and historical)

Uncertain loyalties, globe-trotting suspense, and diverse characters with rich backgrounds power Rosenthal's second novel (after Del Rio), an intimate World War II thriller of secrets, exiles, and high personal stakes. Devastated by the loss of Estelle, the mysterious woman he loved, Solly Meisner is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War trying to find a place for himself in the Jewish community of Pennington, South Carolina, in 1941, though he's dismayed by the discrimination that he witnesses and experiences. Solly is surprised when a recruiter from the Coordinating Office of Information, FDR's newly formed spy agency, blackmails him into a mission with the threat of exposing Solly's Communist past.

Solly sets off for the jungles of the Yucatan, discovering a "ragtag group of European exiles," not all of whom he's sure he can trust, but also Nazis too close to the Americas and some hard truths about his own life and loves. By the end, Estelle--a classic noir-ish antiheroine of opaque loyalties--won't be the only person dear to him whose fate he's desperate to discover. Estelle's blend of glamor and hardboiled attitude is memorable ("falling in love looks a bit like this," she tells Solly, grounding out a cigarette with her heel), and sharply penned entries from her journal are a highlight in a novel concerned with the choices women faced in the past: "convent, motherhood, monotony, or madness," as she puts it to Solly.

Hovering over all this, of course, are what Solly thinks of as "the ghosts of Warsaw" and his certainty that if the COI fails to stop the Nazis "his parents' days of relaxing in their backyard in Cleveland would be over." While the breadth of settings and flashbacks add a rich historical dimension, readers must stay alert to keep up with the fast pace and shifting perspectives among characters with secrets. The payoff is a textured portrayal of a man grappling with his loyalties, ideals, and the darker shades of wartime alliances. It's an engrossing journey.

Takeaway: Intricate WWII espionage story of secrets, longing, and high personal stakes.

Comparable Titles: Pam Jenoff's The Lost Girls of Paris, Kristin Harmel's The Paris Daughter.

Production grades

Cover: A-

Design and typography: A

Illustrations: N/A

Editing: A

Marketing copy: A

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Serpent Bearer." BookLife Reviews, vol. 8, no. 47, 9 Dec. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A819037035/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1501e2e7. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Rosenthal, Jane THE SERPENT BEARER She Writes Press (Fiction Fiction) $17.99 3, 11 ISBN: 9781647428501

Rosenthal presents a World War II-era adventure novel, set mostly in the Yucatán jungle in the 1940s.

Early on, a frame story introduces an elderly Solly Meisner living in North Carolina in 2008, exasperating both his daughter, Izzy, and his full-time caregiver with his stubborn independence. During an episode of dementia, he begins to reveal long-kept secrets about his past that lead Izzy, a retired archaeologist, to question everything she think she knows about her family. Most of the story, however, takes place in 1941, in the months before the invasion of Pearl Harbor and shortly after Solly has, by chance, survived a bombing that targeted his band of brigadistas fighting in the Spanish Civil War. A U.S. government agent with the Office of the Coordinator of Information sends Solly to spy on suspected Nazi activity in Mexico, blackmailing him into doing so by threatening to expose Solly's record as a Communist Party member and revolutionary fighter in Spain. The young lawyer accepts, but he's certain that the mission will end with his death. In a dilapidated hacienda in the Yucatán, he meets three other Jewish exiles who've fled horrors in Europe, some bored expats, and, eventually, Nazi operatives. In addition to chapters from the perspectives of Solly and Izzy, readers get scenes in diary entries of Solly's aristocratic ex-lover, Estelle, and from the point of view of Grace Weintraub, a Hollywood script doctor. Each narrative voice is distinctive, and the characters and settings throughout are beautifully drawn, from care facilities to remote hotels: "The first-floor patio was abuzz with chatter, a flurry of waiters running around like mad, supplying distraught guests with mineral water or spirits." The various mysteries unfold at a gratifying pace, and the frame story generates tension between the past and present; readers get action sequences worthy of 1940s Hollywood, as well as an examination of the lingering effects of past choices.

A consistently compelling war story that expertly balances multiple plotlines and perspectives.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Rosenthal, Jane: THE SERPENT BEARER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A825128249/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=40b73b3d. Accessed 1 July 2025.

Ciucci, Carolina. "Del Rio." Clarion Reviews, 20 Jan. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649606256/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=12d8654d. Accessed 1 July 2025. "Rosenthal, Jane: DEL RIO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A656696339/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32864c9a. Accessed 1 July 2025. "Del Rio." Wisconsin Bookwatch, June 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A710803419/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2de07cab. Accessed 1 July 2025. Igra, Caroline Goldberg. "The Serpent Bearer." Clarion Reviews, 5 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A815534180/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4bb9d3e6. Accessed 1 July 2025. "Rosenthal, Jane: THE SERPENT BEARER." Kirkus Reviews, 19 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A817953799/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a1f6c079. Accessed 1 July 2025. "The Serpent Bearer." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 47, 9 Dec. 2024, p. 127. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A820017377/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1d358dee. Accessed 1 July 2025. "The Serpent Bearer." BookLife Reviews, vol. 8, no. 47, 9 Dec. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A819037035/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1501e2e7. Accessed 1 July 2025. "Rosenthal, Jane: THE SERPENT BEARER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A825128249/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=40b73b3d. Accessed 1 July 2025.

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