Vicious politics, betrayal, divide fictional college faculty

All Quiet on the Midwestern Plains by Dorothea Shefer-Vanson © 2018, ISBN9781723-871801, 399 pages plus acknowledgements, available on Amazon.

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – My colleague, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, has written a novel based in part upon the time that she and her husband Yigal had come to the American Midwest together while he served as a visiting professor. In this novel, Avi Samuels is a visiting Israel professor of paleontology at Nebraska University in the town of Seacrest, Nebraska. His excitement about his pending research in this midwestern American university quickly turns to disappointment, when the chairman of the department, Harold Anders, tells him that instead of having one of the regular offices, he will be consigned to a storeroom in the basement. The reason, he said, was that another professor, Dr. Wu from Taiwan, was also coming, and unlike Samuels, he had brought with him a research grant.

But, we soon learn, Anders’ true reasons for shunting Samuels down to the basement are far darker than that.  Instead of it being the opportunity he had dreamed about, life at Nebraska University becomes ever more discouraging.   The perplexing departmental politics, plus his compelling desire to engage in groundbreaking research, so preoccupy Samuels that he little notices how unhappy his wife, Rachel, and 14-year-old twins, Daniel and Davida, are becoming in their new town.

In an afterword, Shefer-Vanson says the novel is “based partly on personal experience and partly on my wild imagination,” and as a friend and colleague of hers, I’m tempted to try to figure out where experience ends and imagination begins. Truly, however, it makes no difference because this is a captivating tale, albeit one that may diminish whatever respect a reader might have for small college academia. It also may leave foreign readers wondering whether there is, never far from the surface, an undercurrent of hate and anti-Semitism in America.

Besides charting the experiences of the Samuels, the novel pictures the life of Anders and his frumpy wife Ida, as well as that of departmental colleague Tom Friedman and his attractive wife Nancy.  To outsiders, the Andress, Friedman, and Samuels families may present a picture of propriety, but secret passions—whether stirred by ennui or sexual lust—keep this novel moving along at a fast clip.

A town not far from Seacrest is regional headquarters for the Brotherhood, whose neo-Nazi members lash out with vandalism against Jewish targets. These actions are intended to be warnings of far more violent acts unless Jews such as Samuels depart Nebraska forthwith, so that the state—and later the country—can become the exclusive reserve of white Christian Americans.

It is painful to criticize the work of a colleague, but a reviewer’s first loyalty must be to his readers.  I hope that by pointing out what I believe are deficiencies, the criticism will be understood as constructive. Let me hasten to add that I believe this novel is well worth reading. Its positive aspects far outweigh the negative ones.

The stories of academic struggles—be they of the twins Davida and Daniel in their new school, or of Friedman and Samuels in the Andress-dominated university department—have the ring of truth to them, whereas the accounts of meetings among the Nazis lack the same verisimilitude. The Nazis’ conversations sound cliched, rather than real.   I’m thankful that I can surmise that Shefer-Vanson has had few, if any, encounters with real Nazis, but has had more than her share of experiences with faculty members and their spouses. Her characterization of Dr. Wu, the Taiwanese professor, saying little more than “Ah, so,” employs an unfortunate stereotype normally associated with Japanese people rather than with the Chinese people of Taiwan.

Counterbalancing the vile neo-Nazis in this novel are some simple farm people who work at the university, including maintenance man Wayne, who takes to heart the biblical injunction in Genesis 12: 3 in which God tells Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” In his enthusiastic, open-hearted way, Wayne does whatever he can to help Professor Samuels through the dark times.   In the departmental office, a secretary, Wendy, appears to be of similar mind.

While the novel has its faults, its virtues more than compensate. It focuses our attention on the rivalries and pettiness that can characterize academic politics, while also providing insight into how inattention and indifference can crack the foundations of what had started as good marriages. It also suggests ways that those who’ve erred can find redemption.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com