Best known for Baby Boom-era housing developments that transformed potato fields and orchards into suburban sprawl, East Meadow's past is full of fascinating long-forgotten events. Rediscover violent feuds of jealous farmers, such as the love triangles of the 19th century Brower clan. Marvel at the unlikely escapades of eccentric millionaire Jacques Lebaudy, who believed he was a sovereign emperor while living in a Gilded Age Salisbury estate. Explore the exponential growth of one of New York's original school districts, full of political interference and drama that climaxed with a Pete Seeger performance sanctioned by the Court of Appeals of the State of New York
Following World War II, East Meadow developed into a suburban paradise some 20 miles east of New York City. The hamlet's name was derived from its proximity to the colonial settlement at Hempstead and the topography of the Hempstead Plains that covered much of present-day Nassau County. East Meadow was once known for herding sheep, raising cattle, and growing potatoes--livestock frequently outnumbered the human population. Large farming estates of the Barnum, Carman-Lowden, and Fish families drove the local economy and existed alongside smaller farms and businesses that dotted the colonial-era roads. East Meadow was also home to high-society Gilded Age mansions, dangerous automobile races, stylish polo and golf clubs, and famous residents such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph J. Lannin, and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. Proximity to Mitchel Air Force Base and Roosevelt Field placed East Meadow directly under the path of important airplane firsts, such as Charles A. Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight.
From the author of Paris Never Leaves You, Ellen Feldman's The Living and the Lost is a gripping story of a young German Jewish woman who returns to Allied Occupied Berlin from America to face the past and unexpected future “A deeply satisfying and truly adult novel.” —Margot Livesey, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother David, manage to escape to the States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and graduates to a magazine job in Philadelphia. David enlists in the army and is eventually posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland, which trains German-speaking men for intelligence work. Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family. Millie, works in the office responsible for rooting out the most dedicated Nazis from publishing; she is consumed with rage at her former country and its citizens, though she is finding it more difficult to hate in proximity. David works trying to help displaced persons build new lives, while hiding his more radical nighttime activities from his sister. Like most of their German-born American colleagues, they suffer from conflicts of rage and guilt at their own good fortune, except for Millie’s boss, Major Harry Sutton, who seems much too eager to be fair to the Germans. Living and working in bombed-out Berlin, a latter day Wild West where drunken soldiers brawl; the desperate prey on the unsuspecting; spies ply their trade; werewolves, as unrepentant Nazis were called, scheme to rise again; black markets thrive, and forbidden fraternization is rampant, Millie must come to terms with a decision she made as a girl in a moment of crisis, and with the enigmatic sometimes infuriating Major Sutton who is mysteriously understanding of her demons. Atmospheric and page-turning, The Living and the Lost is a story of love, survival, and forgiveness of others and of self.
In Women of the Silk Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own. Tsukiyama's graceful prose weaves the details of "the silk work" and Chinese village life into a story of courage and strength.
Following World War II, East Meadow developed into a suburban paradise some 20 miles east of New York City. The hamlet s name was derived from its proximity to the colonial settlement at Hempstead and the topography of the Hempstead Plains that covered much of present-day Nassau County. East Meadow was once known for herding sheep, raising cattle, and growing potatoes livestock frequently outnumbered the human population. Large farming estates of the Barnum, Carman-Lowden, and Fish families drove the local economy and existed alongside smaller farms and businesses that dotted the colonial-era roads. East Meadow was also home to high-society Gilded Age mansions, dangerous automobile races, stylish polo and golf clubs, and famous residents such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph J. Lannin, and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. Proximity to Mitchel Air Force Base and Roosevelt Field placed East Meadow directly under the path of important airplane firsts, such as Charles A. Lindbergh s 1927 transatlantic flight."
