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On a Golden Chain
- A Jewish Novel by Ruth Benjamin
There is a loud, sickening crash ... blackness ... a sound of tearing metal ... incredible heat ... the sound of dripping water
... people screaming. . . .flames ... children
crying ... many people running . . . crawling... pushing ... terror on their faces . . railway carriages,
twisted out of all proportion ... people being carried out, crying, bleeding ... some
of them ... so
still ... people lying side by side alongside the tracks ... children ...
She looks into a child's face ... it is her face .. except that it is covered in blood ... She
screams .... she is running through dark woods ... tall
trees ... and she
is screaming and screaming.
"Dorothy, Dorothy, wake up. Wake up! You are having that nightmare again. Wake up!"
As she heard
Richard's voice, Dorothy felt herself being drawn slowly, almost reluctantly into the present. She was in a
warm, comfortable bed. There was no train, no station, no screaming, no image of herself covered in blood. She was at home
with her husband and her two children. She gave a sigh of relief. Why did that dream come so often to haunt her? Why that dream? She had heard of people having nightmares of
falling, of monsters, or of getting lost,
but why a train? And why so very, very real?
She looked at her clock and
found it was five-thirty a.m. Too early to
get up, but too late to go back to sleep. She looked towards Richard who was sleeping peacefully as if he had not woken her. She wished she had the ability
to do that, to just wake up and go
back to sleep as if nothing had happened.
But it took her a long time to go to sleep if she was disturbed in any way. It just wasn't worth trying.
(from Chapter 3 of
“On a Golden Chain”)
On a Golden Chain was one of the first books I ever
wrote.
It was written by
hand into a large exercise book and then taken to a typist to type , hoping
that she would be able to read my writing.
Once finished it was
sent cautiously to CIS, a Jewish Publisher in New Jersey . It was very exciting when they
accepted the book and watching it develop and communication with the editor,
Raisy Kaufman and with Rabbi Ellinson
was like going on a creative, educational and rewarding journey.
It was published,
and when I first held the book in my hand it was something I can hardly
describe. At this time I had no idea the book would be so successful.
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This was in 1991
In 1995 it was
published in French and a school play was put on, based on the book, in one of
the Paris
theaters.
In 1997 it was
published in Spanish.
In 2001 CIS
published the book again in hard cover.
The
book has been the inspiration for several school plays and has been read and
reread over the years.
I then
republished it myself on an Independent Publishing Platform, both as a
paperback and as an e book. It is now once more freely available on all Amazon
and various other sites e.g. Jewish e books.
In brief, this is the story:
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