By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Many novels that combine social action and personal stories feel preachy, as if the characters exist solely for the politics. Fortunately, that is not true for two recent novels. While political action is close to the surface in “Love, Coffee and Revolution” by Stefanie Leder (Black Stone Publishing), the author has created a believable and flawed character whose life choices are open for debate. Social action is further from the surface in Meg Waite Clayton’s “Typewriter Beach” (Harper Collins Publishers), but the politics of the time period inform the course of several characters’ lives. 
Readers won’t blame Dee Blum, the narrator of “Love, Coffee and Revolution,” for wanting to escape her life. Her incredibly critical family is pushing her to become a lawyer after she graduates from college, while her obnoxious, but politically active, boyfriend views her as an appendage to his life, rather than a full partner. Dee is looking for meaning and purpose, but on her own terms. This leads her to apply for a job organizing eco-tours in Costa Rica, employment for which she is has no real skills or knowledge besides a rudimentary ability to speak Spanish. 
To her surprise, Dee gets the job. Although tempted to bow out at the last minute, she hates the idea of giving into her fears more than she fears traveling to a foreign country and being incompetent at her job. That’s how Dee finds herself in Costa Rica, living with a family whose dynamics and religion are very different from her own, and trying to arrange tours of eco-friendly coffee farms. Although she’s broken up with her boyfriend and decides to remain single, she finds herself attracted to the sexy Adrian, although his politics and hers are very different. To add to her confusion, she’s in e-mail contact with Matias, a revolutionary organizer whose work she admires and who seems not only to admire her, but who flirts with her via e-mail.
However, problems arise when Dee discovers that a very powerful fair-trade farm may be lying about what its practices, including its exploitation of the environment and its workers. Dee must also deal with her supervisor who seems willing to overlook the problems Dee discovers. Plus, what is Dee to do to about her attraction to the very sexy Adrian: he seems willing to help her, but also continually challenges her assumptions about the world, showing her the reality that her ideals don’t always recognize.
“Love, Coffee and Revolution” was a great deal of fun to read. Dee is an engaging character, even though for most of the novel she is a bit of a mess; readers will find themselves rooting for her to succeed. The work also includes some surprisingly moving moments. Its ending is filled with page-turning suspense as Dee puts a daring plan into action. While, when thinking back after finishing the novel, the conclusion is not completely believable, it was so satisfying that most readers won’t mind. 
While the action in “Love, Coffee and Revolution” takes place during contemporary times, “Typewriter Beach” focuses on two time periods: 1957 and 2018. In 1957, starlet Isabella Giori finds herself exiled to her studio’s cottage in Carmel. Her career seems about to take off: a movie she had a part in is set to open and she’s been interviewed for a role in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Yet, her one indiscretion could completely derail her career. In the neighboring cottage, Leon Chazan works on screenplays he won’t be able to sell – at least, not under his own name – because he’s been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. An immigrant from Europe, he has other secrets he prefers not to reveal. Isabella and Leon slowly become friends, but the question remains whether they can save themselves or each other.
In 2018, Gemma Chazan visits her grandfather’s cottage after his death. Although she would love to keep Leon’s home, she needs the money that can be made by selling the property since, after writing one successful script, she’s been blackballed in the industry by a producer for refusing to perform a sex act. Although the Me Too Movement has begun, Gemma feels it’s too late to challenge what happened to her. While at the cottage, two things force her to think about her life choices: meeting her neighbor, Isabella, for the first time, and finding a safe filled with her grandfather’s writing that makes her question just how much she really knew about him. 
While the opening of the novel was moody and a bit off putting, the work quickly became absorbing and intriguing. Readers will find themselves eager to not only learn the solutions to the puzzles the author offers – for example, the real story behind Leon’s heartbreaking past in Europe – but also rooting for certain events to happen, events that won’t be revealed here because that would ruin the surprises. All the characters are well developed and the prose is beautiful and precise. When two characters are bonding while talking about a movie they love, one character describes what a good film can accomplish: “Gemma understood the memory that binds them. That’s what a movie or a book, a good story, can do. Eight fingers on eight keys, and people all over the world laugh or cry, people all over the world look at others a little differently, with more compassion and sympathy, forgiveness.” That accurately describes my feeling when finishing “Typewriter Beach.”