A friend urged me to read this book and I spent the first few parts wondering why, disliking the characters, not feeling the urgency to read. And then, it all changed. A new part began. I turned the page. Everything changed. This was one of the most unique books whose narrator surprised me along the way.
Longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize • A Best Book of 2024: Time, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, The Sunday Times (London)
“Remarkable…Compelling…Fine and taut…Indelible.” —The New York Times • “Moving, unnerving, and deeply sexy.” —Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with the Pearl Earring • “A brilliant debut, as multi-faceted as a gem.” —Kirkus Reviews
A “razor-sharp, perfectly plotted” (The Sunday Times, London) tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of…
Born in the SF Bay Area, I grew up as a Reform Jew in a very non-Jewish small city in the 70s like Rabbi Buchdahl. I missed geography and math tests every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and my teachers never understood why. Like Rabbi Buchdahl, I felt like an outsider even though both my parents were Jewish. She and I also went to the same Jewish Camp Swig, but while I was not a songleader, I inhaled the tunes of Debbie Friedman. Admittedly, I tended to skim some of the sermonic bits at the end of every chapter but gobbled up the rest.
“A story that begs to be told. . . engrossing.” —The Washington Post
From the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi, a stirring account of one woman's journey from feeling like an outsider to becoming one of the most admired religious leaders in the world
Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Profoundly spiritual from a young age, by sixteen she felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—Would a mixed-race woman ever be…
A phenomenal and inspiring suite to Abi Daré's The Girl with the Louding Voice. I was thrilled to find that the young Adunni was still in Lagos and hoping to be educated and fighting to be heard. This is a story of so many important themes: voice, education, power, community, and love. Be sure to read the two in order.
A stunning, inspiring new novel from Abi Daré, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with the Louding Voice
When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria—and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades.
Back home in Lagos a few days later, Adunni, a plucky fourteen-year-old runaway, is lying awake in Tia's guest room. Having escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future,…
When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect.
Both 23, both Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home.
In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines.
