My Fiction
Yellow Jack and Turpentine is the first historical fiction novel about Jewish living in the Ozarks. Set in the 1880s and based on the memoir published in Documenting Jewish of the Ozarks a special double edition of OzarksWatch Magazine (and the most republished edition of OzarksWatch). It retells, in a compelling manner, the saga of the failed Am Olam commune in Northeastern Arkansas.
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Yellow Jack is appropriate for young adult through adult audiences. We follow three families from Odessia, Russia to some place outside Newport, Arkansas. They leave their native city in 1882 to go to New York City. There they earn money to make the trip to Arkansas to meet fellow commune members who have already settled in the area. Without farming experience and because of the floodplain they chose, they cannot farm as they expected. They struggle to overcome poverty, yellow fever, and malaria. Finally, the leader, Moyshe Herder, accepts that they must end their dream of farming.
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We are in Exile/Estamos en Galut takes place between World War I and World War II on the island of Rhodes in the city of Rhodes during a world-wide depression. Here the Christian and Jewish Greeks lived together in relative harmony under Italian rule. However, families were forced to send their sons and husbands off the island to earn money for their families back home. Ultimately, the community was destroyed by the Holocaust. This story attempts to revive the lost world of the Rhodelisi, the Jews of Rhodes, a Jewish community with unique traditions. This story follows one particular family that comes to the realization that they must join their oldest sons in America. Through the youngest child, we uncover the stormy side of the relationship between the Jews and Christians and how children can help destroy bigotry. Through the middle children, we learn about adolescent dreams, romance, and the reality of growing up. The grandparents teach us about tradition and how hard it is to let go. The epilogue explains what happens to this family after the Holocaust. All this is told through Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish spoken by the Rhodelisi and traditional Rhodelisi sayings.
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Set in 15th-century Greece, A Shout in the Sunshine tells the story of an extraordinary friendship between two boys from different cultural backgrounds. On the surface, Miguel, a refugee from post-Inquisition Spain, and David, the son of a wealthy Greek Jewish fabric merchant, have little in common. As they work together in David’s family shop, they find they share a special connection that goes beyond the divide of rich and poor, Spanish and Greek. Will an argument over David’s sister be more than their friendship can bear? A Shout in the Sunshine sheds light on an often forgotten part of Jewish history - the Greek Jewish experience. Set in tumultuous times for the Greek Jewish community, the book explores what happens when two distinct Jewish communities must learn to live together. In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jewish community of Spain. Sultan Beyazit II invited these refugees to Thessalonika, a community already home to a diverse Jewish population with deep roots in Greece. The melding of these different Jewish groups created a vibrant Jewish community that was, tragically, almost entirely destroyed during World War II. This book is a testimony to the remarkable nature of this once thriving world.
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