Michelle Cameron is the author of Babylon: A Novel of Jewish Captivity (Wicked Son, 2023); Beyond the Ghetto Gates, which was awarded a Silver Medal in Historical Fiction by the Independent Book Publishers, won First Place/Best of Category in the Chanticleer Goethe Awards, and was a Foreword Indies finalist (She Writes Press, 2020); The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz (Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books, 2009); and In the Shadow of the Globe (Lit Pot Press, 2003), which was named Shakespeare Theatre of NJ’s 2003-04 Winter Book Selection and performed at the Stella Adler Studio’s Shakespeare Benefit. A director of The Writers Circle, Michelle teaches creative writing to children, teens, and adults in New Jersey and virtually. Residing with her husband in Chatham, NJ, she has two grown sons of whom she is inordinately proud.

More than a year has elapsed since the ghetto gates were destroyed and Ancona’s Jewish community liberated by Napoleon’s troops. Yet Mirelle is ostracized—by the community, her erstwhile best friend, and even her mother—and labeled a “ruined woman.” As her efforts to nurture her family’s legacy are thwarted, she realizes she might have lost her last chance at love. Meanwhile, Daniel, now a lieutenant in the French army, and Christophe, the man responsible for Mirelle’s disgrace, set sail to an unknown destination with General Bonaparte’s forces. There, Napoleon and his men face a harsh and unforgiving landscape and new, implacable enemies, and Daniel’s faith in and loyalty to the commander he once worshiped are put to the test.

Epic and rich with well-researched detail, Napoleon’s Mirage is a novel of misguided ambition leading to brutal warfare, failures of cultural appropriation, and a military defeat that just may have changed the course of history.

When French troops occupy the Italian port city of Ancona, freeing the city’s Jews from their repressive ghetto, it unleashes a whirlwind of progressivism and brutal backlash as two very different cultures collide. Mirelle, a young Jewish maiden, must choose between her duty—an arranged marriage to a wealthy Jewish merchant—and her love for a dashing French Catholic soldier. Meanwhile, Francesca, a devout Catholic, must decide if she will honor her marriage vows to an abusive and murderous husband when he enmeshes their family in the theft of a miracle portrait of the Madonna.

Set during the turbulent days of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian campaign (1796–97), Beyond the Ghetto Gates is both a cautionary tale for our present moment, with its rising tide of anti-Semitism, and a story of hope—a reminder of a time in history when men and women of conflicting faiths were able to reconcile their prejudices in the face of a rapidly changing world.