Shaena Lambert

Inspired by the life and death of Petra Kelly, the original Green Party leader and political activist who fought for the planet and human rights in 1980s Germany, Shaena Lambert brings us a timely and captivating new novel about a woman who changed history and transformed environmental politics--and who, like many history-changing women, has been largely erased. Award-winning novelist Madeleine Thien calls Petra "a masterpiece--a fierce, humane and powerful novel for our times." January, 1980. At the height of the Cold War in Germany, the charismatic Petra Kelly inspires hundreds of thousands to take to the streets to protest the placement of nuclear missiles on West German soil--including a NATO general named Emil Gerhardt who shocks his wife and his colleagues by converting to the cause. The "General and the Peace Maiden," as he and Petra are soon called, not only vault to fame as the stars of the Green movement, gaining real political power with their earth-based agenda, but they also fall in love. A web of jealousy threatens them, activated by Manfred Schwartz, Petra's ex-lover, who urges her to face the true nature of her general, drawing back the curtain on his wartime past. Petra believes in the power of redemption, but soon realizes that Emil's past threatens not just her love, but her power to forgive. And eventually her life. Narrated by Manfred Schwartz twenty-five years later, in a present world even more beset by existential threats, Petra is an exploration of love, jealousy, the power of social change and the limits of compassion. It portrays an age, like our own, on the brink of global disaster, and explores the subtle healing forces we possess, set against those that pitch us deeper into chaos. Most of all it is a story of a woman capable of founding a new and world-changing politics and taking on two superpowers, who still must grapple with her own complex nature, and a singular and fatal love.

Petra

Later, when Daisy remembered that night, she could smell the scent of honeysuckle at the window and see the moon on the floorboards. But in her memories Keiko wasn’ t bandaged: her face was broken down the middle, just like the moon. One half was pure and white, the other half mottled and porous. The unbroken side was as smooth as porcelain, terrifying in its brightness, but in every memory it was the pocked side that drew Daisy in. (From Radiance, p. 192) 1952: Eighteen-year-old Hiroshima survivor Keiko Kitigawa arrives in New York City for surgery to cut away the scar marring her lovely face. Sponsored by The Hiroshima Project, Keiko is expected to be a media darling. But the Keiko who arrives in America does not perform as scripted, preferring to recall instead her grandfather’s dappled gardens and tales of trickster foxes. Frustrated by her recalcitrance, the Project presses Keiko’s suburban host mother, Daisy Lawrence, into duty, tasking her with drawing out the girl’s horrific story, the one they need for the media circuit. When Daisy reluctantly agrees, she must fight to enter Keiko’s sphere of intimacy, and is shocked by what she learns there. Like Keiko, Daisy has a few surprises in store for the Project. But even Daisy is taken aback by what bubbles up from beneath her calm domestic existence in Riverside Meadows, drawn to the surface by Keiko’s presence. Keiko, bandaged after her surgery like the Invisible Man, becomes a conduit for secret grief. A barrage of letters and gifts from strangers arrive at their door. Riverside Meadows housewives, a photographer covering her story, and even a former Japanese-held POW heap their weightiest confidences upon her. Perhaps it is the force of her tragedy that pulls them in, or perhaps it is because her bandages make her seem like a blank receptacle for their own pain. Whatever the cause, Daisy finds it increasingly difficult to find the real Keiko beneath these burdens. But she will fight with all her strength to protect the girl, even at incalculable cost.

Shaena Lambert

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