First published 2013
A gay man returns to his Savannah high school reunion where the golden boy football star he once knew now pursues him, despite being married. An awkward teenager wrestles with God, superstition, and girls as his bar mitzvah approaches. A museum worker discovers secrets about a Renaissance painter that mirror revelations in his own life. A cantor hoping for romance acts on impulse and faces deep regret. An elderly widow devoted to Jewish tradition confronts her modern grandson's beliefs. These characters navigate the tension between religious duty and personal longing in communities stretching from the 1920s to today. Each struggles to reconcile what they want with what their faith and families expect. The stories explore how desire and devotion collide across generations of Southern Jewish life.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, jewish
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Savannah
Period: 1920s, today
193 pages · Kindle Edition · Sarabande Books
Content warnings: sexual-content