San Francisco, CA, Feb. 25, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The singer/songwriter Shaya has released “Fire in Our Hearts (Newark Minutemen),” a song based on the bestselling historical novel Newark Minutemen by her mother, Leslie K. Barry. The novel, published by Morgan James, is based on the Jewish boxers who joined with the mafia and the FBI to beat back the rising German-American Nazi party in New Jersey during the Great Depression. It’s the first historical romance to plant German-American Nazis in American soil well before a shot was fired in Europe and reveal the underground resistance against them here. The song accompanies a book trailer for the audiobook release from publisher Morgan James on May 31st.
Newark Minutemen’s feature film rights have been optioned by Fulwell73, the production company behind The Late Late Show with James Corden. The book “Newark Minutemen is an epic story of battles, boxers and mafia, overlaid with an explosive love affair that compares with the classic star-crossed stories from Casablanca to Titanic,” Producer Leo Pearlman told Variety.
Shaya Barry was especially inspired by the Romeo and Juliet-type story in which the boxing hero falls in love with the American Fuhrer’s daughter. Echoing the time when our country was ripped apart and men had lost their dignity, the song draws on the conflict between weakness and strength, darkness and light and the fight to save the most sacred force; love. The song was produced by David Simon-Baker and co-produced by April Grisman, with special thanks to Alec Otto and Chase Bader.
Shaya explains, “The challenge was balancing the darkness with a feeling of hope. I needed tension around resistance, a military feel for fight and identity, but at the same time a sense of uncertainty. There were a lot of contrasting emotions I wanted to capture. Working with my grandma and mom throughout 2020 gave me the focus to express something that was their story, yet expressed in my own style.”
Music producer, April Grisman, performer and daughter of Bay Area music legend Cyretta Ryan, says, “Shaya Barry has written the most alluring and breathtaking composition taking us on an epic journey of emotions through her brilliant method of creating tension and release with her haunting and beautiful vocals.”
The release of the song completes a chain of three generations of women in Leslie Barry’s family. Her mother lived the events the book are based on, and described the scene to Barry in extensive interviews that revealed her uncle’s history as one of the Nazi-punching boxers of New Jersey. Barry then researched the history extensively, including looking at FBI files and learning to box herself before writing the novel which has topped three Amazon bestseller lists and been praised across America and in Israel and France as well.
While Shaya has been writing, performing and producing songs growing up in Tiburon, CA, including one with Grammy nominated performer Mary Unobsky, “Fire in Our Hearts” is the first to be released as a platform of songs she has been working over the past several years during her time in San Francisco as a student at UC Berkeley and a summer in Nashville.
Watch the Newark Minutemen audiobook trailer with "Fire In Our Hearts" here.
Listen to "Fire in Our Hearts" now on SoundCloud here.
Add to you Spotfiy here.
More about Newark Minutemen:
Newark Minutemen is based on the incredible true story from the 1930s about a Jewish boxer who goes undercover for the mob and FBI to fight fascism in New Jersey during the Great Depression. It was a time when America remained complacent as Hitler spread racial hatred in Europe, and his fanatics could brashly goose-step down American streets waving twin Swastika and US flags, led by Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn. The Newark Minutemen were a band of Jewish boxers who rose up to fight this Nazi shadow party and, perhaps the greatest enemy of all, American complacency about this looming evil.
The novel is based on the real-life experiences of author Leslie K. Barry’s uncle, a Newark Minuteman boxer. The story was pieced together from first-hand accounts from Barry’s 93-year old mother and her cousin, FBI reports, boxes of undercover source material and years of research.
Read more about Leslie K. Barry’s novel Newark Minutemen here.
Facebook: Newark Minutemen Twitter: @NMinutemen
Order: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, Bookshop
For more information including interviews with Shaya and Leslie K. Barry contact: owen@thoughtgangmedia.com
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