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Coming May 17, 2022

From the Award-Winning Author of Rashi’s Daughters and 50 Shades of Talmud

Comes a Powerful Romance with a Purpose

The Choice: A Novel of Love, Faith, and the Talmud
by Maggie Anton, author of Rashi’s Daughters, Banot Press, ISBN: 978-0-9763050-3-3, $16.99

It’s Brooklyn, New York, and the year is 1955. Dr. Robert Salk discovers a vaccine for polio. The Dodgers play the Yankees in the World Series. The McCarthy hearings deport communists while the new state of Israel takes shape in the Middle East. Young Rabbi Nathan Mandel hears a knock at the door.

Expecting journalist H. M. Covey, he is shocked to find attractive Hannah Eisin on the other side. Hannah reveals that Covey was her birth name before her father died and her mother married Samuel Eisin. She uses an ambiguous byline because she’s writing for a Yiddish newspaper where female columnists are rare.

After the interview, Hannah convinces Rabbi Mandel to teach her Talmud, something forbidden by Jewish law that could cost him his job if discovered. Things start innocently enough, but soon the gloves come off as “Annie” and “Nate” discover they are passionate about much more than Talmud.

Maggie Anton has written a powerful love story with a purpose: to expose the many ways the Torah and Talmud have been interpreted unfavorably toward women. Anton is fearless in the subjects her characters tackle during their weekly sessions:

  • Niddah & Mikveh. Rules regarding sex and menstruation.
  • The Minyan & The Drash. Why Jewish women are excluded from services.
  • The Shanda of Mesirah. A rabbi refuses to turn a pedophile over to police.

Anyone interested in the role of women in Judaism will find Maggie Anton’s The Choice an unforgettable story that sets the record straight!

ABOUT MAGGIE ANTON:

Maggie Anton is an award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction and a Talmud scholar with a deep understanding of Jewish women’s history. Her research into the great Jewish scholar Rashi, who had no sons, led to the award-winning trilogy Rashi’s Daughters, followed by a two-book series, Rav Hisda’s Daughter, a National Jewish Book Award finalist and a Library Journal pick for Best Historical Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

ADAVANCE PRAISE FOR THE CHOICE:

“Maggie Anton gives evocative voice to the generation of our mothers, whose questions and bold solutions, especially about the most intimate of subjects, laid the foundation for the contemporary transformation of women’s status in Jewish learning and law.” —Rabbi Susan Grossman, DHL, Senior Rabbi, Beth Shalom Congregation, Columbia, Maryland, and coeditor of Daughters of the King

“The Choice takes us into the Jewish world of love and learning and the love of learning. One can only be grateful for such an intriguing and engaging work. Maggie Anton’s combination of history, imagination, and feminist reading of classical Jewish texts is impressive.” —Rabbi Laura Geller, Rabbi Emerita, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, and coauthor of Getting Good at Getting Older

“Maggie Anton utilizes her characters’ authentic voices to address social justice while still entertaining the reader with an engaging romance.” —Jackie Ben-Efraim, Special Collections Librarian, American Jewish University

“Maggie Anton’s new novel embeds issues concerning the intersection of modernity, belief, and ritual practices within a lively, intellectually engaging romance. . . . Best of all, the romantic relationship of Hannah and Nathan evolves in sync with their scintillating discussions of various Talmudic passages, from both traditional and critical perspectives, leaving us wondering just how much more enriched Jewish life would be today had women been participants in the Talmudic dialectic all along.” —Stuart S. Miller, Professor of Hebrew History and Judaic Studies, University of Connecticut at Storrs, and author of At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT MAGGIE ANTON’S NOVELS:

“True to her mission as a historical novelist, Maggie Anton offers a woman’s take on what has been a mostly male enterprise.” —Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Jewish Journal

“Maggie Anton demonstrates just how sex-positive Judaism is.” —Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, American Jewish University

“Anton delivers a tour de force . . . [Readers] will fly through the pages and come away wishing for more.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A compelling combination of drama, suspense, and romance.”—Lilith magazine

For further information, review copy requests, or to schedule an interview with Maggie Anton, please contact Rachel Tarlow Gul at Over the River Public Relations: rachel@otrpr.com.


Filed Under: Fiction, News & Announcements, Uncategorized Tagged With: Banot Press, fiction, historical fiction, Jewish author, Jewish fiction, Maggie Anton, OTRPR, Over the River PR, Over the River Public Relations

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Coming April 26, 2022

PILLAR OF SALT

A Daughter’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust

by Anna Salton Eisen with Aaron Eisen

“Anna Salton Eisen’s PILLAR OF SALT is a profoundly moving tale of generational trauma and healing between father and daughter. Through her travels with him to Poland, and her relentless search through personal keepsakes and Nazi archives, she discovers her own history and in doing so grapples with questions in the hearts of all of us. Her writing is straightforward and present, effortlessly whisking the reader along for the journey, into the beast of the past, to emerge into a new light. I am grateful to be working with such wonderful source material as PILLAR OF SALT for a feature length documentary film.” –Jacob Wise, filmmaker of In My Father’s Words (fall 2022, JWise Productions)  

“Anna Salton Eisen’s important exploration of her Holocaust heritage is about building community, building connection, through history, through your family, through your story.”
–Deb Liu, CEO Ancestry.com

As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anna Salton Eisen breaks the silence that was intended as a protective shield against the unspeakable past in her new memoir, PILLAR OF SALT: A Daughter’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Mandel Vilar Press Trade Paperback Original; April 26, 2022; $19.95). A new voice in Holocaust literature, Anna begins this heart-wrenching memoir as she looks back to her own youth when she discovers two hidden watercolor paintings depicting the horrors of the Holocaust and sets out to uncover the truth of her father’s past. Her quest leads her on a journey to unlock a history sealed in silence and buried by time. With her father as her guide, she travels through the picturesque Polish countryside pockmarked by the remnants of former concentration camps and sites of desolate Holocaust memorials. Together with her family, they return to the ghetto where her father’s imprisonment in ten concentration camps over three years began. They also find their way back to his boyhood town and into his childhood home where painful memories exist, but strangers now live. Through her keen observations and open heart, Anna combines the meticulous work of an archaeologist with the compassionate perspective of a daughter.

“Writing PILLAR OF SALT has allowed me to tell the story of looking back and sharing how I was changed and made incredible connections when I took on the legacy of the second generation. I found my father when I tried to help him carry the pain and memories of the Holocaust.” -Anna Salton Eisen

PILLAR OF SALT is a second book for Anna Salton Eisen, who co-wrote The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir with her father, George Salton, which will be released in a new expanded edition in Fall 2022 (Mandel Vilar Press).

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Anna Salton Eisen was a founding member and the first president of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. She has conducted extensive research into the Holocaust and spoken on that topic to school and community groups. She served as a docent for the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies (now the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum) and conducted Holocaust survivor interviews for the USC Shoah Foundation. Anna is an Ambassador to #everynamecounts, a digital initiative of the Arolsen Archives, the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of Nazi persecution. A licensed social worker, Salton Eisen formerly practiced as a therapist, specializing in mental health and trauma. She lives in Westlake, Texas.

Aaron Eisen is a third-generation Jewish writer. Along with co-authoring PILLAR OF SALT, he is an important part of the upcoming documentary film project, In My Father’s Words. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Aaron is working on a non-fiction book about the impact of the Holocaust on the humanities in contemporary America.

On sale in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 28, 2022.

More praise for PILLAR OF SALT:

“A vividly colored, elegant study of family dynamics as two generations eventually came to terms with a tragic Holocaust past.”

—Richard Breitman, author of The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany from Within

“Navigating her way through the ruins of memory, Anna bears eloquent witness to the scope of the Holocaust that continues to cast its shadow over generations…. Anna found the courage to pen these powerful words [and] we must find the courage to read them and be transformed into witnesses.”

—David Patterson, Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas

“A true and beautiful story of a daughter’s quest to understand her parents’ haunted past, and to discover … the indissoluble nature of love and family. A powerful and poignant read.”

—Jennifer Rosner,author ofThe Yellow Bird Sings,a National Jewish Book Award Finalist

For further information, review copy requests, or to schedule an interview with Anna Salton Eisen, please contact Rachel Tarlow Gul at Over the River Public Relations: rachel@otrpr.com, 201-503-1321.

ISBN 9781942134824, 190 text pages plus 8 pages of photos, artwork, and map, 6 x 9, $19.95

E-ISBN 9781942134831, 190 text pages plus 8 pages of photos, artwork, and map, 6 x 9, $9.99

For more information, visit https://www.mvpublishers.org/.

Individuals can order on Amazon.com, Independent Booksellers at Bookshop.com or at www.mvpublishers.org.

Trade Distribution: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution | 800.283.3572 | Sales.Orders@cbsd.com

Filed Under: News & Announcements, Uncategorized Tagged With: Anna Salton Eisen, April release, Holocaust, Mandel Vilar Press, Memoir, OTRPR, Over the River PR, Over the River Public Relations, Pillar of Salt

By otrpr Leave a Comment

March 2022 Virtual Book Tour for THEY CALLED US GIRLS by Kathleen C. Stone

Just in time for Women’s History Month, THEY CALLED US GIRLS by Kathleen C. Stone is a fascinating and inspirational book about female ambition and unorthodox paths toward fulfillment that is essential reading for women and girls today. Stone interviews seven unconventional women, all born before 1935, who broke the mold, defying expectations—as doctor, lawyer, artist, physicist, executive director, and intelligence officer. In insightful, personalized portraits that span a half-century, Stone weaves stories of female ambition, uncovering the families, teachers, mentors, and historical events that led to unexpected paths.

Join us in March for the virtual book tour on behalf of THEY CALLED US GIRLS as we share features, book giveaways, spotlights and reviews.

“They Called Us Girls, riveting and inspiring, illuminates the remarkable lives of amazing women born in the first half of the last century. Kathleen Stone’s subjects are diverse in their backgrounds and professions, but all are trailblazers whose quiet triumphs opened doors for us who follow behind. This is an important book.”

— Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs

 “They Called Us Girls is a reminder of what talented women once endured, and the stories it tells so deftly should continue to inspire us today. Not every barrier has disappeared.”

— Louis Menand, author of The Free World and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club

Tuesday, March 1 – We Break For Books

Wednesday, March 2 – The Book Club Mom

Thursday, March 3 – Nurse Bookie

Friday, March 4 – Suzy Approved Book Reviews

Saturday, March 5 – Diaries of a Bibliophile

Monday, March 7 – Book Pairings

Tuesday, March 8 – Just Another Chapter and Tea AND Well Read Traveler

Wednesday, March 9 – Amy’s Book Nook

Thursday, March 10 – Bookalong

Friday, March 11 – Kim Reads and Reads

Monday, March 14 – Aimee Dars Reads

Tuesday, March 15 – Rozie Reads and Wine                                                                                                                          

Wednesday, March 16 – Earl Grey Reads

Thursday, March 17 – Mel Reads All The Things AND Bujos ‘N Books 

Friday, March 18 – Tina May Reads

Sunday, March 20 – Girl Who Reads

Monday, March 21 – Secret Reading Life

Tuesday, March 22 – The Salty Book Worm

Wednesday, March 23 – We Love Big Books and We Cannot Lie

Thursday, March 24 – A Bookworm With Wine

Friday, March 25 – Subakka Bookstuff

Monday, March 28 – What Is That Book About

Tuesday, March 29 – Angel’s Mom Reads

Wednesday, March 30 – Books and Coffee Mx

Thursday, March 31 – It’s Bibliotherapy 

Filed Under: Blog Tours Tagged With: blog tour, Cynren Press, Female Ambition, March Blog Tour, nonfiction, Women's History Month

By otrpr Leave a Comment

Coming May 17, 2022…

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN

My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond

by ALVIN ENG

Powerful, funny at times, and consistently inspiring, Our Laundry, Our Town turns one artist’s journey into the story of AAPI communities and emergence of a movement over the past half-century. Alvin Eng’s engaging memoir looks back on the past to envision a better future.” 

—David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning playwright of M. Butterfly

Second-generation Asian American youth always feel like they’re the first to not belong. How liberating, then, to encounter Our Laundry, Our Town. The book tells a moving tale of the distances that separate you from your immigrant parents, as well as a Toisanese labor history set in a laundry, but there’s a surprising twist. The protagonist is a young punk who hates math, loves The Who, and finds himself navigating the late-twentieth-century multicultural bohemia of rock and hip hop, Asian American film and theater, and avant-garde queer performance. In this humorous, amiable, and deeply heartfelt memoir, Eng seems to have achieved the Asian American dream: honoring his mother and father before him while also creating a community where he can be his whole self and finally belong.” 

—KEN CHEN, Associate Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College; former Executive Director, Asian American Writers’ Workshop 

Alvin Eng’s fascinating, funny, aching, searching, loving memoir derives its power from that key element of New York City’s dynamism and magic:  that behind every apartment door and scrappy storefront, in every far-flung outer-borough neighborhood, lie vast worlds, sweeping histories, and epic tales of questing souls melding the old ways into something meaningful and new.” 

—LISA KRON, playwright, actor and Tony Award-winning bookwriter/lyricist of Fun Home

Playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator Alvin Eng grew up in Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s – back then, his was one of the few immigrant Chinese families to live there. His parents had an arranged marriage and ran a Chinese Hand Laundry. In OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond (Fordham University Press| Empire State Editions, May 17, 2022, $27.95), fans of memoirs that speak to the immigrant experience – such as Beautiful Country and Sigh, Gone – will delight in Eng’s illuminating time capsule of the Chinese-American experience, from the Chinatowns of the U.S to China’s motherland. Eng explores issues of identity, race, and societal expectations with marvelous humor, introspection and tenderness. 

Says Eng, “In some ways, my parents’ arranged marriage was the ultimate tragic opera in that I never once saw them dance or engage in any amorous way that went one breath or gesture beyond the bare-bones necessities of running our laundry and our family. In another sense, theirs was an unmitigated immigrant success story in that they both ventured to the other side of the world, at a time when our race was legally blocked from becoming U.S. citizens for almost an entire century, and prospered. Against mountains of societal, institutional, and legal obstacles, they raised five children and maintained a successful Mom-and-Pop Chinese hand laundry business for three decades, as well as two homes.”

Eng reconciles the push and pull of an insular home life with the turbulent yet inspiring street life around him – from faux martial arts TV stars to punk rock and theater. In the 1970s, NYC, like most of the world, was in the throes of regenerating itself in the wake of major social and cultural changes resulting from the Counterculture and Civil Rights movements. These same systemic conflicts form the core of our current global reckoning on representation and identity. 

By the 1980s, Chinese culture began to flourish in Flushing. Yet, Eng remained an outsider of sorts because he was one of Flushing’s few Chinese citizens who could not speak fluent Chinese. As a theatre practitioner and professor in the 21st century, discovering the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s seminal Americana drama, Our Town, became the unlikely catalyst for a psyche-healing pilgrimage. 

At City University of Hong Kong, Alvin and his wife, director/dramaturg Wendy Wasdahl, led a Fulbright Specialist devised theatre residency on the Chinese influence on Our Town. From this residency, the US Consulate Guangzhou invited Alvin to perform his Our Town-inspired solo, The Last Emperor of Flushing, in his family’s ancestral Guangdong Province of southern China. Learning to proudly tell his own story on stage helped to make him whole.

ALVIN ENG is a native NYC playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator. His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., as well as in Paris, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, China. Eng is the editor of the oral history/play anthology, Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage (Temple, 2000). His plays, lyrics, and memoir excerpts have also been published in numerous anthologies. His storytelling and commentary have been broadcast and streamed on National Public Radio, among others. www.alvineng.com

OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN:
My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond
by Alvin Eng
Fordham University Press | Empire State Editions; Hardcover and e-book; May 17, 2022
(Memoir | Asian American Studies | Theater & Performing Arts; $27.95; ISBN#: 978-1531500368; 224 pages, with 25 b&w images)

Filed Under: News & Announcements Tagged With: 1970s memoir, AAPI, AAPI History Month, AAPI memoir, Alvin Eng, Chinese American memoir, Fordham University Press, New York City memoir, OTRPR, Our Laundry Our Town, Over the River Public Relations, Spring 2022 Memoir

By otrpr 1 Comment

February 2022 Bookstagram Tour: GETTING CLEAN WITH STEVIE GREEN by Swan Huntley

“What to Read When 2022 is Just Around the Corner” — The Rumpus
 “Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Adult Fiction” — LGBTQ Reads
 “Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2022” — Buzzfeed
“10 Books We Can’t Wait to Read” —PureWow

Booklist raves, “Loyal readers of Kelly Harms, Lia Louis, and Maria Semple will fall for this compelling novel of identity, reinvention, and the contrast between ordered spaces and hidden chaos.”

Follow this acclaimed group of literary bloggers throughout the month of February and learn more about this quirky, feel-good story about one woman’s messy journey from self-delusion to self-acceptance. There will be lots of book giveaways, reviews, features, and more, so be sure to follow along each day learn more about GETTING CLEAN WITH STEVIE GREEN!

Tuesday, February 1 — SUZY APPROVED BOOK REVIEWS

Wednesday, February 2 — SOME KIND OF A LIBRARY

Thursday, February 3 — SUE THE BOOKIE

Friday, February 4 — NOVEL GOSSIP

Monday, February 7 — THE CAFFEINATED READER

Tuesday, February 8 — MICHELLE READS BOOKS

Wednesday, February 9 — AIMEE DARS READS

Thursday, February 10 — BEAUTY AND THE BOOK

Friday, February 11 — BLUNT SCISSORS BOOK REVIEWS

Friday, February 11 — MEL ANN ROSENTHAL

Friday, February 11 — BOOKS N BLAZERS

Monday, February 14 — I AM YOUR BOOK FRIEND

Tuesday, February 15 — BRIANA’S BEST READS

Wednesday, February 16 — THE BOOK CLUB MOM

Thursday, February 17 — TINA MAY READS

Friday, February 18 — CHASING CHAPTERS

Monday, February 21 — READING BETWEEN THE WINES

Tuesday, February 22 — NURSE BOOKIE

Tuesday, February 22 — WE LOVE BIG BOOKS AND WE CANNOT LIE

Wednesday, February 23 — BOOKS LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING

Thursday, February 24 — TOTAHLY BOOKED

Friday, February 25 — DOG EARED STYLE

Filed Under: Blog Tours, Uncategorized Tagged With: Gallery Books, Getting Clean with Stevie Green, LGBTQ fiction, recovery novel, Swan Huntley

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