Russian Bride

by Marcelle Bernstein

A marriage has been arranged...A very unlikely marriage...between Salka, olive-skinned and golden-eyed, and Leon, the experienced Viennese sensualist.

Salka's parents are far away in Russia, and her Hamburg cousins want her off their hands. Leon is rich, the scion of a Viennese banking family. What more can a dowryless girl hope for? Salka feels attracted to this powerful, intense man, but at moments she feels she hates him.

In the feverishly brilliant in-de-siecle Viennese world that becomes her home, Salka experiences the shattering heights of passion but also passion's limits. In the joy of loving, the agony of loss, in the bitterness of anti-Semitism that echoes the pogroms of her childhood, Salka never ceases to as herself, "What can a woman do?"

She finds her answer in the fulfillment of a haunting prophecy told to her by a rabbi when she was a child.

Genres: Fiction

408 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tend to like these kinds of books - the sweeping epics where Love is Lost and occasionally Won, where people fall in love with their siblings' spouses But It Can Never Be, where a woman Pursues Her Love Across An Ocean but when she Finds Her Passion, it is for... her work, rather than her man (gasp!) (few of these things happen in this book) - but for some reason this one felt a little flat. It provides a nice look at turn-of-the-century Vienna and surrounds, and an interesting look at Jewish life of the period, but Salka was such a wet blanket, and none of the other characters were sufficiently gripping to make up for it.

[Christy Mach · Rating 4 out of 5]

what I remember most about this book is the beautiful descriptions of the cities, buildings, decor and the wonderful foods. A nice story that makes you feel you are experiencing all the sensualness as you read it.