Literary Modiin - March 2021 Author Event

Here's a bit about the books:

FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER beautifully brings to life Atlantic City in the 1930s, offering the sights, sounds and smells of the beach and the boardwalk, as well as the daily life of Atlantic City’s Jewish community. It also foreshadows, through refugee Anna’s plight, the coming catastrophe of the Holocaust…. It’s a worthy tribute and a satisfying historical family drama.”

MEISELMAN: THE LEAN YEARS Meiselman has had enough. After a life spent playing by the rules, this lonely thirty-six-year-old man―"number two" at a suburban Chicago public library, in charge of events and programs, and in no control whatsoever over his fantasies about his domineering boss―is looking to come out on top, at last. What seems like an ordinary week in 2004 will prove to be a golden opportunity (at least in his mind) to reverse a lifetime of petty humiliations. And no one―not his newly observant wife, not the Holocaust survivor neighbor who regularly disturbs his sleep with her late-night gardening, and certainly not the former-classmate-turned-renowned-author who's returning to the library for a triumphant literary homecoming―will stand in his way.

"Meiselman is a triumph of comic escalation." ― Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask

THE FACE TELLS THE SECRET Everything has been hidden from Roxanne — her birth name, her sister, her family history—until her “boyfriend” tries to ingratiate himself by flying in her estranged mother from Tel Aviv. That visit is the start of a tumultuous journey, in which she first learns about a profoundly disabled sister who lives in a residential community in the Galilee, and later begins to unearth disturbing long-held family secrets. The process of facing this history and acknowledging the ways she’s been shaped by it will enable Roxanne to forge the kinds of meaningful connections that had for so long been elusive. In this way, The Face Tells the Secret is the story about a woman who finds love and learns how to open herself to its pleasures. The Face Tells the Secret is also a story that explores disability from many angles and raises questions about our responsibility to care for our kin. How far should Roxanne go to care for the wounded people in her life—her mother, her sister, the man who professes undying love? What should she take on? When is it necessary to turn away from someone’s suffering?

“[Jane Bernstein] is a brilliant and lyrical writer and storyteller. Her new novel, “The Face Tells the Secret,” is a sublime pleasure that will remind readers of Elizabeth Strout’s excellent books.”

Pittsburgh City Paper

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