Life in New York is tough, especially when you are married to a Russian in the 1950s. Millie had a very simple life. She worked in a factory, and she had a few friends, and the only problem she had was competing with her sister. Her sister’s name is Susan. Susan was always better than Millie. Susan was a better worker, cook, wife , and mother. But, in just 5 years Millie’s life flipped upside down. She married her husband Ed. Ed is a stern, Russian, man who tries to control everything. But, ed only cared about one thing, having a son. However David, their son, turned out to be mute. This came to many problems in Millie and Ed’s marriage. Ed wanted to get rid of David and have a new son. The only solution in Millie’s eyes was to protect David and move to the Knickerbocker village in upstate New York. Little did she know, this decision would be the undoing of her family. In Knickerbocker village the apartments were bigger, the people more nicer, and most of all, everything was richer. In the apartment next door housed another Russian family, the Rosenbergs. The Rosenbergs were very kind, but secretive people. Yet, Millie and Mrs.Rosenberg become best friends. In the 1950s the cold war was happening. And Russians were accused of being spies, including Ed. Ed is fired from his job and gets a new one. The only problem is he can’t tell anyone, including his own wife. Sick from all the secrets, Millie goes to therapy with her son David. Somehow, she falls in love with the therapist, Jake. However, Millie finds out that Ed works with the FBI with Jake. Jake thinks that Ed is a traitor. With all this drama, Millie and Jake plan to runaway with each other when everything calms down a bit. When the cold war blows over only 2 people are executed for being spies, the people living next door.

Wow! This book was amazing! It was one of the most dramatic thing I've ever read.It reminded me of a TV show. One of the most interesting things was: the Rosenbergs were real people. After reading this I was so interested I researched a bit. It turns out the author was actually very accurate. The character traits, the dialogue, the setting, everything was accurate. I think it is awesome when an author blends fiction with non-fiction! I recommend this book to any reader who likes history or just a good story. ( )

Millie Stein is a young mother living with her husband Ed and two-year-old son David in Knickerbocker Village in New York in 1947. They're on the eleventh floor, and their down-the-hall neighbors are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Millie and Ethel become friends. When Ed, a Russian immigrant, loses his job over the loyalty oath now being pushed, Julius hires him at his own company, Pitt Machine.

Ed is a cold and inattentive husband, and Millie envies Ethel her warm and loving relationship with Julius--but he and Ed are moving in the same communist circles.

This is a fictional account of the Rosenberg spy case, seen through the eyes of a neighbor struggling with her own marriage, her own child (who is apparently autistic, though that's not a word much in use in 1947), and her own issues. She and Ethel become friends, close in many ways, and mutually supportive even when there are secrets and strains, as well.

Millie has spent her life to this point being the younger, less-attractive sister, the one who got matched up with the son of a friend of her parents, the wife who produced a "defective" son. She's a bit naive, and wants to think the best of everyone. That gets increasingly challenging, as it becomes clear that Ed is lying about some important things. There's also the rising anti-Russian feeling, and the growing fear of communists and of the atomic bomb. Through the late forties and early fifties, as she endures a pregnancy, a miscarriage, and another pregnancy, and the growing awareness of secrets around her, she also experiences people she knows being arrested and charged with terrifying crimes, as Ed disappears and reappears, and the arrival in her life of Dr. Jake Gold, a psychotherapist whom she meets at a party Ethel and Julius throw--though Ethel says they barely know him.

As events march along, the reader knows what's ultimately coming, but Millie is slow to realize. Even how information gets around is different; the internet is decades in the future. It's a big moment when Ed brings home a television even bigger than the one her sister Sudan has; this is exciting new technology, and both silly game shows and news reports tame by modern standards but scarily immediate in the 1950s have a big impact.

This story is all about character, and a view of the Rosenbergs from a different and rather sympathetic angle. Whether the Rosenbergs were really guilty, and whether they were both guilty, was a subject of lively debate for many years, and Cantor has come to he view that Ethel, at least, was innocent. I don't think whether you agree or disagree is important to enjoying and appreciating the novel. Millie is a good character to know, naive and imperfect, but always trying to do the right thing by her children and by others around her.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via Penguin's First to Read program. ( )

A spellbinding historical novel about a woman who befriends Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and is drawn into their world of intrigue. Brilliantly melding fact and fiction, Jillian Cantor reimagines the life of Ethel and Julius, an ordinary seeming Jewish couple who became the only two supposed Russian collaborators put to death during the Cold War. The story is told through the eyes of their neighbor, Millie Stein, who moved into an apartment in New York’s Lower East Side, along with her husband and their toddler. Millie is caught between her own husband who’s political loyalty she does not trust, a man she befriends who helps with her autistic son, and her friendship with Ethel. A naïve and trusting Millie is thrown into a world of lies, intrigue, and espionage in this gripping tale of McCarthy era hate mongering.

Sometimes I wonder how such horrible things happened in our history that we forget about. One such thing was the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Hours Count tells the Rosenbergs story through the eyes of their neighbor (and Ethel's friend) Millie. The story is much more about Millie too, who just wants to raise her troubled son, and probably escape from her cold husband. But when Millie becomes friends with Ethel, and meets an intriguing doctor at the Rosenberg's home, her life becomes entwined with a world of spies and double agents (both real and suspected) until she doesn't know what is true. But she knows her friend Ethel is not a spy, and that she loves her husband and children. ( )

I Knew nothing about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and found this book and their story very interesting. The book is told through the eyes of Millie Stein who lives on the same floor as the Rosenbergs and is introduced to them by her husband. She has a son, David, who doesn't speak and she meets Dr. Jake Gold who says he will help her get David to talk. Things heat up and she soon finds out Jake is FBI. I found Millie a little naive and innocent. She could only see the good in people and wouldn't believe Ethel and Julie were guilty even after they are executed. The only person she didn't trust was her husband Ed and he was more of a convenient marriage. Jillian did a really good job of bringing all these characters to life. I was so invested in these characters that I did a little research to learn more. I highly recommend this literary fiction. It's well worth your time. ( )