Beginning ~ with someone you never want to see again

Even in a happy, peaceful town, such as ours, it is possible 

to find someone you never want to see again.

Pesha Lindauer found one such person.  A man whose 

visage drove her to rage, and whose voice made her clench her fists and grit her teeth.  A man who haunted her dreams, tormenting her with whips and fire, and whose appearance always left her with the faint smell of sulfur upon waking.

It was doubly unfortunate that the personage in question was her husband, Ishmael.

The Lost Stetl ~ by Max Gross, 2020, historical fiction (Poland)

In a remote corner of Poland, the inhabitants of a tiny Jewish village ignore the modern world — until a shocking event turns their lives upside down.  "A dose of fabulism may be the best cure yet for a psychologically intolerable contemporary moment…[The Lost Shtetl is] a riveting narrative about the costs of living in one’s own time as opposed to the benefits and disadvantages of living in a 'lost horizon' that has been overlooked by the contemporary world. ... If this novel doesn’t take your mind off being holed up in a shuttered-down city or trying to escape the reality of the pandemic by socially distancing somewhere in the country, nothing will." — Vogue.  "Judging by The Lost Shtetl ... author Max Gross is the metaphysical love child of Sholem Aleichem and J.K. Rowling." — Hadassah Magazine.

Word of the Day

shtetl / ˈSHtet(ə)l / noun (historical) = a small Jewish town or village in eastern Europe.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.