Welcome to my PWR Author's Page - Sally Patterson Tubach
Biography
Raised in Pacific Palisades, Sally Patterson Tubach studied at UCLA, Göttingen and UC Berkeley. She taught high school in Hawaii and Munich before pursuing advanced degrees at Berkeley, where she received a PhD in German Literature in 1980. Michael Mann, the youngest son of Thomas Mann, was her dissertation director until his death. A member of PEN America, she has authored and co-authored fiction and non-fiction books as well as articles and short stories. She favors projects that challenge conventions and ideologies, that push margins and expand borders towards a more humane world. She has traveled extensively in Europe and has lived in Germany and France for extended periods. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bordeaux. She has two adopted stepchildren and four grandchildren, and she lives in Orinda with her writer husband, a UC Berkeley emeritus professor.
Novels
(Click HERE for more information about nonfiction books written by Sally Tubach.)
The Grand Dame and Hitler’s Twin: A Comedy of Errors (2020). [Picture of book cover below]
Can an elderly literary snob shape a middle-aged dilettante into a man of sufficient substance to neutralize the potential for evil in Hitler’s identical twin? Cranky Myrtle Halstead, a wealthy resident of San Francisco’s most elegant retirement highrise, becomes enamored of a man half her age—the suave and untrustworthy Bruno de Carlo. She resolves to school him in classic literature and turn him into a man of integrity. Unwittingly, she prepares the Italian American for an unprecedented task two decades following her death. He must turn Hitler’s twin brother into a successful painter in order to keep him out of politics and save the world from another global catastrophe. A colorful cast of quirky characters moves the plot forward in a series of humorous missteps and misunderstandings. In this thought-provoking tale, nature and nurture compete over the souls of a jetsetter and of Hitler’s twin brother in contemporary Baghdad by the Bay. In this singular, speculative, and heartwarming story, chance events can have enormous consequences. Find the surprising answer to an intriguing question of historical hindsight: What if Adolf Hitler had had a different profession?
Download a flyer from the publisher about the book HERE.
Press attention for Tubach's novel:
Praise for her novel:
Testimonial:
Where to buy (click on name to go to site):
Memoirs of a Terrorist (1996) [Picture of book cover below]
Memoirs of a Terrorist is a gripping experimental novel about a young woman raped at the age of fifteen by her father. Having repressed this crime from her conscious awareness, Megan Lloyd's short intense life becomes a quest for sexual and human identity. A privileged daughter from suburban southern California, the heroine writes about early periods of her life in revolutionary Berkeley as well as later events in Malibu, Dallas, Munich, and finally, Paris. Her failure to bring the repressed crime to consciousness reveals a tragic blind spot from which emerges the sexual bondage murder of her lover in a Munich hotel. The heroine's internal story is told by her fragmentary diaries and stories that her father retrieves after her death as a suspected terrorist in Europe. As he approaches his own death years later, Arthur Lloyd attempts to comprehend his daughter by analyzing her texts, and finally confesses his crime to the reader. Thus, two narrative voices, one male and one female, intersect, clash, and reinforce each other in this rich and complex text that weaves a tale of sexual violence and portrays quests for insight and redemption.
Testimonials:
Where to buy:
Biography
Raised in Pacific Palisades, Sally Patterson Tubach studied at UCLA, Göttingen and UC Berkeley. She taught high school in Hawaii and Munich before pursuing advanced degrees at Berkeley, where she received a PhD in German Literature in 1980. Michael Mann, the youngest son of Thomas Mann, was her dissertation director until his death. A member of PEN America, she has authored and co-authored fiction and non-fiction books as well as articles and short stories. She favors projects that challenge conventions and ideologies, that push margins and expand borders towards a more humane world. She has traveled extensively in Europe and has lived in Germany and France for extended periods. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bordeaux. She has two adopted stepchildren and four grandchildren, and she lives in Orinda with her writer husband, a UC Berkeley emeritus professor.
Novels
(Click HERE for more information about nonfiction books written by Sally Tubach.)
The Grand Dame and Hitler’s Twin: A Comedy of Errors (2020). [Picture of book cover below]
Can an elderly literary snob shape a middle-aged dilettante into a man of sufficient substance to neutralize the potential for evil in Hitler’s identical twin? Cranky Myrtle Halstead, a wealthy resident of San Francisco’s most elegant retirement highrise, becomes enamored of a man half her age—the suave and untrustworthy Bruno de Carlo. She resolves to school him in classic literature and turn him into a man of integrity. Unwittingly, she prepares the Italian American for an unprecedented task two decades following her death. He must turn Hitler’s twin brother into a successful painter in order to keep him out of politics and save the world from another global catastrophe. A colorful cast of quirky characters moves the plot forward in a series of humorous missteps and misunderstandings. In this thought-provoking tale, nature and nurture compete over the souls of a jetsetter and of Hitler’s twin brother in contemporary Baghdad by the Bay. In this singular, speculative, and heartwarming story, chance events can have enormous consequences. Find the surprising answer to an intriguing question of historical hindsight: What if Adolf Hitler had had a different profession?
Download a flyer from the publisher about the book HERE.
Press attention for Tubach's novel:
Praise for her novel:
Testimonial:
- "I read the last page very slowly because I didn't want it to end. The final chapters were so wonderful with all the healing, forgiveness, and love. I guess I am sad because I didn't want to say goodbye to all these characters who seemed like friends to me. They all had their human flaws, but the ending was such a wonderful "coming together." Toward the last few chapters, I thought, "How is Tubach going bring this off and tie this all together?" But she did, and beautifully." —Linda Malm
Where to buy (click on name to go to site):
Memoirs of a Terrorist (1996) [Picture of book cover below]
Memoirs of a Terrorist is a gripping experimental novel about a young woman raped at the age of fifteen by her father. Having repressed this crime from her conscious awareness, Megan Lloyd's short intense life becomes a quest for sexual and human identity. A privileged daughter from suburban southern California, the heroine writes about early periods of her life in revolutionary Berkeley as well as later events in Malibu, Dallas, Munich, and finally, Paris. Her failure to bring the repressed crime to consciousness reveals a tragic blind spot from which emerges the sexual bondage murder of her lover in a Munich hotel. The heroine's internal story is told by her fragmentary diaries and stories that her father retrieves after her death as a suspected terrorist in Europe. As he approaches his own death years later, Arthur Lloyd attempts to comprehend his daughter by analyzing her texts, and finally confesses his crime to the reader. Thus, two narrative voices, one male and one female, intersect, clash, and reinforce each other in this rich and complex text that weaves a tale of sexual violence and portrays quests for insight and redemption.
Testimonials:
- “In Memoirs of a Terrorist Sally Tubach employs an epistolary form of narration, fragmented but powerful, in which a daughter’s journal entries are framed by her father’s letters. J. Arthur Lloyd’s avowed wish to rescue the reputation of his deceased daughter (a suicide and accused murderer) is undercut at the outset when he confesses to having brutally raped Megan when she was fifteen years old. His intense brooding over her personal papers, his self-absorbed interpreting of her motives, and his insistent interviewing of anyone he can locate who once was part of her life, all function like an eerie continuance of his incestuous, exploitative relationship with her. No matter how much remorse he expresses for his role in shaping Megan’s catastrophic adult life, the reader shrinks in revulsion from this intrusive father-narrator who cannot keep his hands off his daughter-as-text. . .. Megan Lloyd’s story speaks for the incest victim who does not recover. Tubach’s disturbing portrait exposes the waste and damage that follow inexorably from this primal betrayal.” —Judith P. Saunders, Marist College
- “Memoirs of a Terrorist raises the intimate crime of incest to the level of world politics. Both thriller and polemic, it takes the reader on a dazzling journey from Malibu to Munich, from Dallas to the murky nether world of Paris . . . terrifying in its implications.”—Carolyn See
Where to buy: