25th Annual Book & Author Luncheon

Description

Alice Hoffman, The Marriage of Opposites The Marriage of Opposites is the third of a trio of richly imagined novels that grew from meticulous research in Jewish history and authentic historical events. It’s the story of how an artist’s life was inspired by a strong, unconventional woman—his mother, a woman whose cultural contribution has not been fully appreciated. Set in the early nineteenth century on the island of St. Thomas, The Marriage of Opposites imagines the life of Rachel Pizzarro in an enclave of Jewish settlers who fled to the safety of the Caribbean during the European Inquisition. Rachel was intelligent, passionate, impetuous—a woman who defied the cultural and religious mores of her time to pursue a forbidden love affair with a man seven years her junior. The union would bring shame upon their family; it would also bring a son, Camille Pissarro, who grew up to be one of the world’s most famous painters and the father of Impressionism. Jillian Cantor, The Hours Count; A Novel On June 19 1953 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for conspiring to commit espionage. The day Ethel was first arrested in 1950, she left her two young sons with a neighbor and never came home to them again. Brilliantly melding fact and fiction, Jillian Cantor reimagines the life of that neighbor and the lives of Ethel and Julius, an ordinary-seeming Jewish couple who became the only Americans to death for spying during the Cold War. Diana Bletter, A Remarkable Kindness A novel tracing the lives of four American women who are part of a unique Jewish tradition in their coastal village in Northern Israel. In preparing and dressing women for burial, they grow in friendship and marriages, learn to accept death, and come to appreciate the sorrows and wonders of life.