All Other Nights: A Novel by Dara Horn

Full of surprises with many elaborate twists and turns, the story, set during the American Civil War, keeps one engaged and guessing until the very end.
Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish, Union soldier, hoping for a simple promotion, follows unexpected demands and agrees to spy for the North. Jacob, plunged into the depths of secrecy, commits acts he formerly believed himself incapable of perpetrating. However, as Jacob sinks further into the spy web, in an unlikely scenario, he also meets the woman of his dreams.
Driven by moral obligation and undeterred devotion to his country, Jacob struggles, hurled in and out of danger, as he seeks out the woman he loves. Quirky characters mixed with historical personages deal with love and loss and honor and betrayal.
Horn successfully weaves together enchanting and historic tales based on actual events. Amid the author’s plentiful, colorful and imaginative stories lies a plethora of Jewish traditions and customs that thread throughout.

Dara Horn is clearly a talented writer. I was much more impressed with her ability to create a story and characters than most of the other negative reviewers. This was a story in concept I wanted to read. But the main character of Jacob was so weak and willing to go along with the three buffonish officers who sent him on his missions, it became very difficult reading. The Levy sisters were fascinating, especially Eugenia, so following a main character that sets up her and her sister's capture and possible execution was beyond my capabilities as a reader. (Don't know if they were executed or not and don't want to know)Stopped reading there.

This could have been a great novel if the main character of Jacob wasn't such a fool, wasn't so bereft of morality and moral courage, had any redeeming, likable characteristics (he was not a likable rogue, just a weak moral coward). But alas, he didn't.

Ms. Horn, please try again. And remember, it's people we like or are fascinated by that we want to read about. Not complete tools.

This book was recommended to me as a civil war spy story involving Jewish families. I have read several
books on the Civil War and this seemed to offer new events for me. It started off with interesting reading covering
an assignment given to a northern Jewish soldier to assassinate an uncle in the south being
suspected of spying activities and then marrying into the family to discover more about their operations. Sounds good!!
Then it fell apart for me .From the second chapter on it becomes a love story between the soldier and the southern
young lady of the house. There are many references to Jewish holidays to highlight events and considerable name dropping
of Civil War personalities, but it comes down to the survival of the northern soldier and his southern bride. The references at the
end of the book were quite interesting since they dealt with actual events Unfortunately they were limited. If you enjoy love storys'
give it a try. If you are a civil war reader I would stick to civil war non-fiction books.

Historical fiction is a tricky genre. It's the rare author who can tackle it successfully, and by successfully, I mean making a story set in the past relevant without making it sound, at one extreme, stilted, or, at the other, anachronistically contemporary. It's a tough balancing act.

Let me say this outright: I love Dara Horn. I'm a huge fan of her earlier work, so it's tough for me to write this review. The World to Come was brilliant--a densely textured and deftly multilayered book that nonetheless felt as light as angelfood cake and moved as effortlessly as a watersnake across the surface of a pond. She set the bar pretty high with that one. All Other Nights doesn't really measure up. This story of a Jewish Civil War officer, Jacob Rappaport, who is recruited to spy on his Confederate co-religionists, confronts some great questions and perennial human themes: Does loyalty to one's nation trump loyalty to one's people? Can love survive the trajectory of our parents' choices and the lives they make for us? And finally, what price are we willing to pay for answers to these questions? But the execution I found a little wanting.

I once heard Michael Chabon say during a reading that when it comes to historical novels (and he should know, since he's written a few of them), "research can be a trap." I think Ms. Horn fell into that trap. All Other Nights is scrupulously researched, but one gets the feeling that she was caught between wanting to maintain historical accuracy and telling a good story. It's as though her fidelity to accuracy led her to sacrifice the life, the wit, and the verve that characterizes her earlier work. She bravely attempts to portray the Levy sisters as endearingly quirky, but they just come off as... well, weird. And the two Union officers who serve as Jacob Rappaport's handlers, with their habit of constantly restating what the other has just said, are a bold attempt at comic relief, but they come off as irritating and artificial. And the protagonist, Jacob Rappaport himself, remains a curuiously unfinished and nebulous character throughout the course of the book. The dialogue is flat, the plot a little contrived, and at the end, the reader is left with no affection for any of the characters and no lasting impressions.

And this is odd, because Ms. Horn is no stranger to historical fiction and romans-a-clef. She did a magnificent job of reimagining historical people (Marc Chagall and Der Nister) in The World to Come. Her characterization of Chagall was particularly striking, insofar as she did not hesitate to expose the darker side of this beloved artist--his coldness and self-interest--and in doing so, made him both interesting and human.

That said, All Other Nights isn't a bad read. It's a decent potboiler, and it kept me turning pages until the very end. It was a good try, I'm still a huge fan of Dara Horn, and I'll read whatever she writes. But in light of the work she's done before, All Other Nights was disappointing.