1939: Into the Dark

Paula Phelan
ZAPmedia (2009)
ISBN 9780977819218
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (01/10)


Paula Phelan has captured the mood of New York City in the midst of the zenith of the influence of creative arts and culture in the year 1939. It is a year of turbulent change at a time when the United States is faced with the reality and insight into the atrocities of the War in Europe and the beginning of World War II.

Each chapter title represents a month of the year throughout 1939. Each month details the interaction of two or more members of the cast of characters made up of both fictional and real-life, well-known, contemporary influential men and women.

Her protagonists, Jason Rothman, an up-and-coming playwright and idealist and his wife Miriam Rothman, a promising poet with parents of Jewish descent in Germany, are introduced through a party given in January by Bud Rawley, a patron of the arts and an arms merchant. Other guests at the party are introduced and in later chapters their lives are intertwined, driven by dreams, gifted with diverse artistic talents with one another.

It is Rawley’s hope that the party will unite these influential artists, playwrights, authors, and musicians, into a united creative force in the political issues leading up to United States involvement in the developing climate of another World War. Among the guests present were Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Dashiel Hammett, William Faulkner, Aaron Copeland, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

Unemployment, the result of the end of the WPA program, the investigations of the Un-American Activities Commission and the opening of the New York World’s Fair become focal points a complex inter-active plot. The story takes place in the art exhibits, museums, the theatre, the favorite bars, haunts, and eateries of the sophisticated members of the art community.

The monthly columns of Alan Stipple, cultural commentator and critic of the arts, and Nancy Ames, war correspondent, add to the continuity of the book and bring an additional awareness of the status of the war in Europe, the German treatment of the Jews and the world of entertainment with both highlights and gossip.

Phelan’s writing is informational and relative. Her research and imagination blend to make this an important work of historical fiction filled with little known details of the period covered. Her dialog is stimulating, her descriptions convincing, and her characters genuine. Although, I was somewhat disappointed in the shallowness displayed by the celebrity influencers represented in the story. This may be related to an underlying loneliness and perfection of the true artist.

“1939: Into the Dark” by Paula Phelan is a meaningful and entertaining novel for the history buff, especially those who enjoy the period covering World War II.

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