leora freedman

Celia is a 70-year-old New York artist and educator whose grown daughter Sharon has escaped the pace and expectations of Jewish East Coast life to live in a tumble-down cabin in British Columbia. Following a personal crisis, Celia braves a visit to the wilderness, where she and Sharon become involved with an idiosyncratic Jewish community made up of people one doesn’t meet in Manhattan. What this community lacks in Yiddishkeit it makes up for in heart and spirit.

After facing some of her own demons in this isolated and beautiful place, Celia gains strength and perspective on her life. She returns to New York having triumphed over some of the problems of aging and loss, and opens an unexpectedly romantic chapter of her life. In this novel, stories within stories illuminate the past and present of Celia’s family, whose history ranges from czarist Russia to 1930’s Palestine, up to the present moment in North America.