sheila levin

Susan Warner, the daughter of two holocaust survivors, finds meaning in her work for Soviet Jews. While her professional life assisting Soviet Jews to emigrate is fulfilling, her personal life, her marriage, is falling apart. She begins a passionate affair at the same time as she is asked to go to the Soviet Union to help a noted Soviet Jewish Pianist who is not being permitted to emigrate. Conflicted at work and at home, wanting to do the right thing, Susan must make life choices, for herself and for her cause. Simple Truths has the vitality reminiscent of Erica Jong, and a powerful emotional base that sets it apart. Recommended for larger fiction collections. Marsha G. Fuchs Crown Publishing, NY What a pleasure that Sheila Levin is alive and writing in New York! Levin’s writing is often bitterly coarse, but only in reflection of the torment of Susan’s life. Perhaps not perfectly polished, this is nevertheless a fine debut, one with power and great feeling. Publisher’s Weekly This affecting book is very self-assured for a first novel. Its heroine, a New York woman in her mid-30s, is not. Susan Warner obsesses about her insecurities, the overwhelming weaknesses that afflict her as the daughter of concentration camp survivors, the hurt of being alone, the sense that the whole world, including herself is divorced. She could be a one-woman Holocaust. What saves Susan and prevents this novel from becoming just another diary of a maddening housewife is her involvement-post break-up with lover and suicide attempt-with an International Committee for Soviet Jews and her efforts on behalf of a dissident Jewish violinist. Los Angeles Herald Examiner