Picture Benjamin’s brilliance, his ability to disassemble and rebuild malfunctioning radio receivers, collect rocks and gems with scientific names, and play advanced violin two years ahead of his peers, all without the recognition he craves from his no-nonsense mother and physician father.
Picture Benjamin’s life turned upside down the day after his bar mitzvah when, on May 10th, 1940, he hears the first BBC announcement of Germany’s imminent invasion of France.
Picture Benjamin in the first year of the war as German soldiers patrol the streets and national anti-Jewish decrees strain the lives of the small Jewish section of Rouen, France. He finds solace in his fifth-floor bedroom from his pet cockatiel and hours of violin practice, a room in which he discovers the bells from the cathedral, the carillon concerts that waft into his room. And with that discovery, his future is born: he seeks out the carilloneur at the cathedral to teach him carillon, the largest musical instrument in the world, and his journey to becoming a man begins.
THE CAGED BIRD SINGS is the coming of age story of this boy, his personal struggles and the strength he finds to survive the German occupation of France.
Benjamin enters a Catholic world at the cathedral, a culture unfamiliar to him, one he cannot share with his family. Words spoken, vestments donned, all foreign to a boy who has had a sheltered existence within his Jewish community. But the music, the carillon, takes him into new realms of learning and insulates him from the harsh realities of the war while the support from his new Catholic ‘family’ builds his confidence.
The carilloneur, Monsieur deTarot, becomes a supportive father figure to Benjamin; Jacques-Milan, the frightening, disfigured caretaker becomes a helpful friend. And there is Marie-Nöelle, the beautiful-but-troubled young novitiate nun who changes Benjamin’s life forever.
So, how does Benjamin acquire the strength and courage to get through struggles of war, oppression, and existential threat? It is sometimes said that one can accomplish anything if one works hard enough. Everyone knows that is not true without good fortune on your side. And belief—whether in one’s God or in the good of humanity—might offer direction but rarely delivers on its own.
Love, true Love, is the one thing that does deliver much needed inspiration and strength in bad times. Benjamin’s falling in love with Marie-Nöelle not only unlocks the wonders of his coming of age, it also takes him out of himself, frees him to care about something other than his own self-centered concerns. It is love that actuates his bar mitzvah declaration,‘Today, I am a man’. In the same way, love frees Marie-Nöelle from the constraints at the Abbey under which she has lived since escaping from her troubled past.
Is it fantasy to think that love can blossom during wartime? Losses can be overwhelming, after all. This story sends a buoy of hope into a sea of evil during wartime. In doing so, it reaches beyond World War II, beyond the characters in the story, to calamities of all kinds, present and future.
Available in hardcover, paper, ebook and as audiobook on Audible.com or Amazon.com.
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