Cantor launches new novel 'The Hours Count'

Margie is the protagonist of Jillian Cantor’s 2013 “Margot,” in which Cantor gently balances history and fiction as she weaves her acclaimed story of Margie, who is actually Margot Frank, older sister of Anne, living as a gentile. Cantor’s novel starts with the premise that Margot did not die at a camp, but instead escaped the Nazis. Margie’s life in the U.S. crashes as her father publishes “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Cantor again blends history and fiction in her latest novel, “The Hours Count,” the story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, an ordinary-appearing Jewish couple who were executed in 1953 for conspiring to commit espionage, the only Americans put to death for spying during the Cold War. The author tells the story through the perspective of the fictional Millie Stein, a neighbor who befriends Ethel.

Cantor will launch “The Hours Count” at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, at the University of Arizona BookStore in the Student Union Memorial Center. Laura Fitzgerald will interview Cantor during the launch event.

If Cantor’s title sounds familiar, you may have seen it in Cosmopolitan’s “24 New Books to Read this Fall” and Glamour’s “Biggest Books of Fall 2015.” Critics are loving Cantor’s fact-fiction linkages and vivid writing.

Cantor will discuss her creative process, the challenges of writing historical fiction and how her ideas translate to the page at the launch, according to press materials.

She also is the author of “The Transformation of Things,” as well as teen books “Searching for Sky,” “The Life of Glass” and “The September Sisters.”

Fitzgerald is the author of four novels, including “Lost In America,” a thriller. “Veil of Roses” was a Target Book Club selection.

A Tucson resident, Cantor heads the fiction section of the Tucson Festival of Books’ Author Selection Committee.

The launch event is free, but reservations are requested. Go to tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=292 online.