Giving Up America

The Story

In her 'remarkable first novel' (Entertainment Weekly) The Romance Reader, Pearl Abraham 'deftly lift(ed) the opaque curtain from the closed Hasidic world' (The New York Times Book Review). Now she tells the poignant story of a marriage cracking and collapsing under the weight of conflicting faiths. Deena's father, a Hasidic scholar, opposes her marriage to Daniel, an Orthodox Jew: according to his Kabbalistic interpretation, the union will result in pain. And though Deena has rejected her father's ultrareligious lifestyle, his prediction hovers in the air as she and Daniel renovate their dream house in Brooklyn; as she toils at her desk at the ad agency; as she goes for her daily run. And when Daniel brings a beautiful Gentile coworker home for dinner one day, leading to a series of increasingly heartbreaking betrayals, Deena begins to contemplate where her true home stands -- and how far she is willing to travel to find it...