Jennifer Fink

In the anti-everything hippie culture of early ‘80s Ithaca, New York, what rituals can a girl borrow, steal, or invent to make sense of puberty? Jane Schwartz, a lonely, Talmud-quoting, disco-worshipping eleven-year-old girl, builds a mikvah (Jewish ritual bath) in the porta-sauna of her middle-aged neighbor, Charlene Walkeson, in hopes of saving Charlene from the ravages of cancer. Will Jane also save her fierce, fragile self? Out of fragments of disco, feminism, cooking shows, Christian salvation narratives and Jewish law, Jane forges her own theology. The Mikvah Queen offers no radical transformations; it is instead a story of incremental changes and incomplete human connections. Winner of the Dana Award for the Novel and a finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, The Mikvah Queen is a remarkable exploration of postmodern Jewish identity, cancer, the confusion and promise of ‘70s alternative culture, and the power of ritual.