Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, and always compelling, the stories in this collection explore the many manifestations of being Jewish in a modern and largely secular world. Jennifer Anne Moses creates characters, mostly American, who are struggling with love, relationships, faith, tradition, and most of all family and the ties that bind. A professor of Jewish literature buys a lake house in the Adirondacks with the aim of enjoying it with her husband, dogs, and grown sons, only to discover that her new neighbor is a sexist, dog-hating, and deeply antisemitic bully. The editor of a magazine devoted to lost languages resents the popularity of a younger, less sophisticated novelist, who happens to have been her student. A young woman tries to find her way after her fiance calls off the wedding. With the contradictions, yearnings, imperfections, and longing for grace that beset all of us, these characters reach their own epiphanies - with results that are by turns breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Jennifer Anne Moses is a writer and painter whose books include The Book of Joshua, Food and Whine, and Bagels and Grits. Her writing has appeared frequently in Time magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and elsewhere.
You've Told Me Before The Jewish Wars Angels of the Lake The Charlotte Situation Every Blade of Grass Has an Angel That Bends Over It and Whispers, 'Grow, Grow' The Goy The Young People's Party Summer Rental The Children Mother The Dick The Second Wife Acknowledgments
"Moses creates characters who are flummoxed and struggling, whether with their souls, tragedy, family, loneliness, or neighbors. Throughout, her voice is breathtaking. It carries us through time and is as palpable and real as her characters. The reader follows it, enchanted." - S.L. Wisenberg, author of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch "Moses has the great writer's gift: she deftly peels back the skin of ordinary lives - the follies, the griefs, the passing ecstasies - to reveal the tremors of yearning beneath." - Benjamin Balint, author of Bruno Schulz "I haven't laughed so hard or as guiltily at my people's misfortunes, missteps, and misadventures since the first time I read Cynthia Ozick's "Envy or, Yiddish in America." The things Moses writes about in this impossible-to-put-down collection are either true or true enough, and were I not feeling so guilty, believe me, I'd be laughing much, much louder." - Paul Goldberg, author of The Dissident
