First published 2022
Miriam stays home with measles, watching her world through a fever haze. Louise carries the weight of her family's flight from Vienna to the Dominican Republic before landing in New York. Naomi works as a young psychiatrist, trying to understand minds while wrestling with her own thoughts. These women move through Jewish New York in the decades after World War II, each sharp and tender, funny and cutting. They face the small cruelties and unexpected kindnesses that shape daily life. Time moves around them, sometimes slowly, sometimes in sudden leaps. Memory pulls at them constantly, reshaping what they thought they knew. Kaplan captures these characters as they really are, with all their contradictions. They can be foolish and wise in the same moment, petty and noble within a single conversation. The stories span from the late 1960s to more recent years, showing how these voices have endured. Each woman burns bright on the page, fierce in her own way, fighting her own battles with love, loss, and the persistence of the past.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama, jewish
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-driven, interconnected-stories
Setting: Dominican Republic, New York, Vienna
Period: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s
272 pages · Kindle Edition · Ecco