Mira’s Diary:” Lost in Paris” and “Home Sweet Rome” both by Marissa Moss, Sourcebooks, Inc., ISBNs respectively 978-1-4022-66065 and 978-1-4022-66096, $12.95 each.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO– A teenage heroine learns to her surprise that, unsought, she has the power to travel through time, a genetic gift from her mother whose mysterious disappearance also was related to time travel. In “Lost in Paris,” the inaugural episode in this fictional series for teens, Mira, who loves to draw, is taken to late 19th century Paris, where she becomes friendly with such famous artists as Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt and learns that she has gone back more than a century to play an important role in behalf of her fellow Jew, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who has been unjustly accused of passing on French military secrets to the Germans.
At first clueless about Dreyfus, or the important impact the celebrated, real-life Dreyfus affair had on Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, Mira is like a blind woman feeling her way through a strange city. She develops a crush on Claude, one of Degas’ assistants, who even turns out to be Jewish; chases in vain after her mother who warns her that family members must not time travel together; and grapples with time-travelers known as Watchers who by trickery and force try to undo everything she and her mother want to accomplish.
The fantastic plot, featuring a young initiate into a mysterious dimension with rules of its own, has the flavor of a Harry Potter novel, but alas not the careful exposition that made J.K. Rowling’s fantasies so palpable and riveting. Although Mira is Jewish, we’re surprised to see her pray for her mother’s safety and light candles at Notre Dame Cathedral, an act jarringly out of character for a protagonist who is supposed to be a Jew.
The novel teaches youngsters something about secular Jewish history, and for that, author Marissa Moss deserves plaudits. It also delves into the romantic world of late 19th century French art and literature, bringing to life Degas as a Dreyfus critic more concerned about the reputation of the French military than the truth, and Zola, a hesitant author and pamphleteer whose love for the truth and honor overcomes his satisfaction with his personal status quo.
Time travel is precipitated by “touchstones,” which Mira must find and have physical contact with in order to go from one time era to another. In that Mira loves to draw, readers are benefitted by sketches of places, people and things that she encounters on her voyages–sketches that are laid out in interesting fashion on many pages.
A second Mira’s Diary episode is entitled “Home Sweet Rome.” In this one, Mira travels back to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, where in a boy’s disguise she meets the artist and tavern brawler Caravaggio, who is famous not only for such New Testament paintings as “Salome with the Head of John the Baptist,” (using his own face to portray John’s) but also, on the same theme, such artworks inspired by Hebrew Scriptures as “Judith Beheading Holofernes” and “David With the Head of Goliath.”
Caravaggio, also famous for his depiction of more gentle episodes in Christian Scriptures, introduces Mira to his art patron Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who secretly sympathizes with condemned astronomer and physicist Giordano Bruno.
The scientist has been sentenced to burned at the stake by the Inquisition for his heretical theories about the universe. As this story unfolds, we are introduced to a theory that not only the fictional Mira and her mother are time travelers, but so too were some real people in history including Bruno — which perhaps will be a point of departure for future novels in the series.
Whereas the Jewish experience was a key element in the adventure in Paris, Jews are mentioned only in passing in the story about Rome. Mira walks with an acquaintance through the Jewish ghetto, and feels repelled and ashamed by aggressive street peddlars offering their wares. Later, she has an attack of guilt about how she mentally divorced herself from her own people in order to win approval from a non-Jewish acquaintance. No doubt modern-day Jewish children attending secular schools can relate to this episode.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com