Title: On the Shore
Synopsis: Set in 1917-1925, On the Shore follows the upheaval in an immigrant Jewish family when a son lies about his name and age to fight in the First World War. The story is told from three perspectives. Without telling his family, 16-year-old Shmuel Levinson (a.k.a. Sam Lord) strives to prove his manhood and escape his father’s pressure that he become a rabbi by enlisting in the Navy. His smart but rebellious younger sister, Dev, mourns his disappearance, while chafing against her father’s expectation that she marry instead of pursuing a career in science. Their successful uncle, Gershon Mendel, confronts failure when he ventures beyond their sheltered Lower East Side community to search for the missing boy.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: April 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-925417-32-6
Notes: The episode that begins On the Shore was inspired by my own immigrant family. When my mother was a toddler, her teenage brother also falsified his identity to fight in World War I. He was never heard from again and the family was thenceforth forbidden to speak of him. On the Shore is my attempt to give this unknown uncle, and those closest to him, a voice.
Title: Tazia and Gemma
Synopsis: Spanning 1911 to 1961, Tazia and Gemma is told from the perspective of an unwed mother, whose tale moves forward in time, and her daughter, whose search for her father moves backward. Tazia, a pregnant seventeen-year-old Italian immigrant and survivor of the Triangle Waist Company fire, flees New York, leaving her married lover to think she miscarried the baby he urged her to abort. To support herself and her daughter Gemma, Tazia takes low-wage jobs as she migrates westward. Gemma, now fifty, embarks on an eastward journey to find her father, eventually tracing her roots to Italy. In the end, Tazia no longer needs to escape her history while Gemma finds that her identity leads back to her mother. The narrative illuminates the tension between assimilation versus honoring one’s heritage, and confronts the struggle for self respect in the face of discrimination and demeaning work conditions, issues both timely and timeless.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-925417-72-2
Book trailer: To watch the book trailer for Tazia and Gemma on YouTube go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lijLhwR2Yb0.
Notes: The search for one’s origins is a theme that will appeal to many readers, regardless of their roots. The narrative evokes the concerns of today’s diverse immigrants, notably the desire to both escape and save the past, and the tension between assimilating and honoring one’s heritage. The book also looks at the struggle to retain one’s self respect while working under demeaning conditions, and racial and religious conflicts that are at once timely and timeless. In addition, the novel is a touching story of the fierce yet fraught bonds between mothers and daughters, to whom the book is dedicated, in honor of my own years as a single mother raising the daughter who grew into an amazing woman.
Title: A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve.
Synopsis: A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. is a fictional biography of Meinhardt Raabe, a midget hired to play a Munchkin in the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz. Meinhardt wants the dignity and respect given normal people, yet his disability makes him mistrust even those who can see past it. He devotes his life to succeeding in work, but wonders if it has been at the cost of friendship and love. The novel follows Meinhardt from 1935 pre-war Berlin, where he is victimized by Nazi social hygiene policies, through decades of social change in the United States, ending in 1980 with his pilgrimage to the small town in Germany where the grandmother (Oma) who raised him was born. There he confronts the choice to maintain the safety of his isolation or, at the age of 65, risk opening his heart. Secondary characters, based on imagined and historical figures, include Rodge Smythe, a legless Great War veteran; Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz; Charles Becker, another Munchkin, who marries a fellow cast member and is the father of one normal child and one midget; and Celia Posy, a beautiful fashion model, half-again Meinhardt’s height, with whom he falls in love but who has a hidden disability of her own.
Publisher: Alternative Book Press
Publication date: August 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940122-43-4
Notes: In 2014, The Wizard of Oz marked the 75th anniversary of its release with great fanfare, spin-offs, screenings, and nostalgia. Like many people, I have been fascinated by this movie since childhood. The novel grew out of a short story I wrote imagining a Munchkins’ 25th reunion at Grossinger’s Hotel (now a chapter in the novel). Another episode in the book, in which Meinhardt appears in a 22-hour Andy Warhol movie, was adapted as a stand-alone short story and published as “Door” in the Tahoma Literary Review (see Short Stories page). While I am not a midget, I am a very short adult. Hence, I can identify with the character’s logistical challenges and struggle for full-size respect.
Awards: Editors’ Choice selection by Historical Novel Review (November 2019) (see the full HNR review)
Title: The Great Stork Derby
Synopsis: Inspired by a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history, The Great Stork Derby asks whether an overbearing father deserves the chance to make amends with his alienated offspring. Widower Emm Benbow, told by his doctor he can no longer live alone, must move in with one of his many children or go to a dreaded old age home. Fifty years earlier, Emm pressured his wife Izora to enter the Toronto Stork Derby, an actual contest which offered a sizable cash award to the woman who had the most babies between 1926 and 1936. They had a large family, but it was hardly the happy one Emm envisioned. Now, living in turn with each of his adult children, Emm discovers that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: October 2021
ISBN: 978-1-925965-67-4
Notes: As a psychologist specializing in child development and family relationships, I was drawn to write about this bizarre event that affected real families for generations. The novel’s human interest will appeal emotionally to a wide audience. The narrative addresses the fraught relationships between parents and children, and among siblings who compete for their parents’ attention. The adult children are complex characters, with either good health or physical and mental disabilities, successful or stalled careers, and satisfying or troubled relationships of their own. The story asks at what point ambition turns into obsession, and desire into addiction. Covering a fifty-year span, the book will also attract those curious about the Depression, post-war recovery, the emergence of the women’s and gay rights movements, and an earlier time when families interacted face-to-face around the dinner table. These highly charged issues are addressed with the seriousness they deserve, but also with the humor required to confront them.
Praise from Historical Novel Review: “Based on a true event, this is a touching and poignant look at family life and how it is never too late to effect change.” Read the full review of The Great Stork Derby in the November 2021 issue of Historical Novel Review.
Title: Love, Loss, and Secrets Across America and Beyond
Synopsis: Three gripping and emotional historical novels, Love, Loss, and Secrets is a boxed set of three eBooks comprising my novels On the Shore, Tazia and Gemma, and The Great Stork Derby. On the Shore follows the upheaval in an immigrant Jewish family when, without telling his family, 16-year-old Shmuel Levinson (a.k.a. Sam Lord) strives to prove his manhood, and escape his father’s pressure that he become a rabbi, by enlisting in the Navy. In Tazia and Gemma, a pregnant seventeen-year-old Italian immigrant and survivor of the Triangle Waist Company fire, flees New York, leaving her married lover to think she miscarried the baby he urged her to abort. In The Great Stork Derby an ambitious Emm Benbow convinces his wife, Izora, to enter the Great Stork Derby, a contest which offers a sizable cash award to the woman who has the most babies between 1926 and 1936. But soon his ambition turns into a ruthless obsession and addiction, and despite Izora’s efforts, he is disappointed by his large family, and alienates himself from children. [Note: Each novel is still available individually in hard copy or as an eBook. See the individual listing for each book above.]
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: June 2022
ISBN: 978-0-6454365-1-8
Title: One Person’s Loss
Synopsis: One Person’s Loss asks whether the marriage of young German Jewish refugees can survive their clashing personalities and the traumas of the Holocaust. Set in Brooklyn from 1937 to 1951, Petra and Erich Wedler’s parents send them to America to start a family before the Nazis systematically decimate their community. The novel is told from both perspectives, as the couple find themselves at odds over losses — a miscarriage, the abrupt end of a job, the slaughter of loved ones. Confronting birth and death, their relationship seesaws until a final crisis tests their ability to sustain a balance and stay together.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: September 2022
ISBN: 978-618-86002-01
Notes: The idea for the novel began with my short story, “Shoot the Chute” (Saranac Review, Fall 2017), which in turn began when I read about “Dr.” Martin Couney, a German-Jewish refugee, and his “Incubator Babies” exhibit at Coney Island amusement park. Admission to the display, which ran from 1903 to 1943, before hospitals routinely used incubators, was a quarter. Couney claimed a success rate of 85%, and many parents “abandoned” their babies there in a last-ditch attempt to save their lives. The story is about a woman who becomes fixated on adopting an incubator baby after a miscarriage, despite her husband’s objections. (More about this and other stories in SHORT STORIES.) The novel One Person’s Loss continues to track the couple’s lives before, during, and after WWII.
Title: The Sister Knot
Synopsis: In the heart-wrenching tapestry of The Sister Knot, an enthralling tale unfolds, weaving the resilient bond of a female friendship against the backdrop of history. Set amidst the shadows of World War Two, Liane and Frima, survivors of Holocaust trauma, find solace and strength in each other. Together, through cunning, theft, and prostitution, they navigate the unforgiving streets of Berlin and post-war existence. Brought to the United States by a Jewish refugee agency, their destinies diverge, yet the unbreakable thread of their connection persists. Frima, the adopted sister, seemingly lives the American dream—excelling in academics, a prestigious college, a successful husband, intelligent children, and a fulfilling teaching career. On the other side of fate, Liane, thrust into a group home, rejects the conventional path, embracing a life of dead-end jobs, relinquishing a daughter for adoption, and finding solace in her art even amidst the struggles that lead her to prison. Through six decades marked by drifting apart and fierce reunions, their trajectories reverse, challenging preconceived notions about destiny. For fans of historical fiction, The Sister Knot beckons with its poignant exploration of friendship, resilience, and the enduring strength of the ties that bind. Join Liane and Frima on their journey through the tapestry of time, where the echoes of the past resonate in the unspoken language of sisterhood.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 978-3-98832-057-5
Notes: The novel began as a short story, “Orphan Camp” (see SHORT STORIES), which was sparked by a magazine article about a “camp” for WWII refugee children, housed in a Bronx building that had formerly been a YMCA. After I finished the short story, the two protagonists continued to live vividly in my imagination, inspiring me to write a novel about their “sisterhood” after their lives diverge. Although rooted in events 75 years ago, the narrative is timely as children today endure war, forced migration, and prejudice. While acknowledging the lifelong injury caused by these tragedies, the book offers hope for the strength and healing properties of friendship and art.
Title: Who Cares?
Synopsis: Who Cares? is the story of a lively place where old people go to die. Set in 1960, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, this literary novel — whose title could be a cynical dismissal or heartfelt plea — invites readers into Woodruff Home for the Aged, a public facility for the indigent elderly. Faced with a tanking economy, city officials solicit a developer’s proposal to buy and convert the home to a pricey private senior residence. Woodruff’s tenants fret over where they will live; employees worry about losing their jobs. As the clock ticks, the novel tracks the city’s deliberations about the sale, the strategies devised to block it, and the intimacy and intrigue among the book’s many players. With empathy, humor, and memorable characters, the novel is told from multiple perspectives: Miss Mamie Martine, a feisty octogenarian with an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and her political adversary, Mr. J. T. Hillenbrand, a once wealthy nonagenarian wiped out in the Depression; Jilly Duprey, the teenage biracial great-granddaughter of Mr. Hillenbrand who is at odds with Hugh Pepper, the city manager; Laurel Robbins, the home’s reformist director and Rupert Boyle, the anti-authoritarian custodian who defies her; Mamie’s nephew Simon Walpole, an amateur sleuth intent on digging up dirt on Franklin Savoy, the shady developer; and an omniscient narrator who offers a sardonic prologue and epilogue. Zippy as a spry senior citizen, Who Cares? challenges readers to weigh the disposability of the elderly against their dignity.
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication date: December 02, 2025
ISBN: Forthcoming
Notes: In high school (over 60 years ago), I volunteered at what was then called an “old age home” for the poor. The dismal conditions haunt me to this day. Since then, as a developmental psychologist and end-of-life doula, I continue to be concerned with how society treats the elderly. More broadly, I am a champion of social justice. And I love feisty old woman, like my protagonist, having become one myself!