Hope's Triumph

If you are intrigued by the cover of this book, you may become interested in Hope Stetson's story, a historical novel set in the time just before World War II, known in the entertainment world as the death of vaudeville. It is just a small part of what was going on in the world then, but it contributes a small pathos to the larger story of humankind. Hope and her sister, Vivian, manage to overcome the violent objections of one Abdul Amine to their way of life, and in so doing, manifest the triumph of the ideology of their Western Civilization over the ideology of their antagonist. Incarnated in Hope are the ideals of her civilization, and her triumph is not the sort we've become accustomed to with that word. It is a quiet, almost humble triumph, whose actualization demands that the left hand not know what the right hand is doing. It is also a love story, as all life's stories basically are. The story takes you across the Atlantic by boat, to Morocco, Italy, Switzerland, with real-life descriptions, and through changes of character and personality-the lifeblood of any good novel. Hope does not dominate, but the men, too, are real. Would you, too, like to be kissed by Hope?