On a Golden Chain - One of my first Jewish Novels.

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.

It was the editor who phoned me some weeks or months later:  The book was being ordered and reordered from all over the world. It was fast becoming in the Jewish World, a Best Seller.

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.

However it was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain especially in paperback copy .

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:

Life for the Wilson family living in a small English town was picture perfect. But when her young son receives a toy train as a gift, Dorothy reacts with strange agitation. Soon she is having recurrences of an inexplicable old nightmare involving a terrible train crash. Why does it all seem so real? And why is it always the same? Then the family is suddenly plunged into confusion by the sudden death of Dorothy's mother who, with her last gasping breath , reveals that Dorothy is not really her child. Dorothy is stunned. Who is she? Who are her real parents? Are they still alive? How can she ever expect to find them? Unfortunately the only clue to her identity is a small Jewish star on a golden chain . . .and those awful nightmares.