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Fall Blog Tour for Jerusalem As A Second Language by Rochelle Distelheim

Release date: September 29, 2020

JERUSALEM AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (Aubade Publishing) is the last book written by Rochelle Distelheim, who passed away in June 2020 at the age of 92. Foreword Reviews calls the novel “absorbing” and describes the author as “incisive, funny, and poetic in approaching questions of religious practice and resistance.”

Synopsis: It is 1998. The old Soviet Union is dead, and the new Russia is awash in corruption and despair. Manya and Yuri Zalinikov, secular Jews — he, a gifted mathematician recently dismissed from the Academy; she, a talented concert pianist — sell black market electronics in a market stall, until threatened with a gun by a mafioso in search of protection money. Yuri sinks into a Chekhovian melancholy, emerging to announce that he wants to “live as a Jew” in Israel. Manya and their daughter, Galina, are desolate, asking, “How does one do that, and why?”

And thus begins their odyssey — part tragedy, part comedy, always surprising. Struggling against loneliness, language, and danger, in a place Manya calls “more cousin’s club than country,” Yuri finds a Talmudic teacher equally addicted to religion and luxury; Manya finds a job playing the piano at The White Nights supper club, owned by a wealthy, flamboyant Russian with a murky history, who offers lust disguised as love. Galina, enrolled at Hebrew University, finds dance clubs and pizza emporiums and a string of young men, one of whom Manya hopes will save her from the Israeli Army by marrying her.

Against a potpourri of marriage wigs, matchmaking television shows, disastrous investment schemes, and a suicide bombing, the Zalinikovs confront the thin line between religious faith and skepticism, as they try to answer: What does it mean to be fully human, what does it mean to be Jewish? And what role in all of this does the mazel gene play?

About the Author: Rochelle Distelheim, a Chicago native, earned numerous short story literary awards, including The Katherine Anne Porter Prize; Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and Fellowships; The Ragdale Foundation Fellowships; The Faulkner Society Gold Medal in Novel-in-Progress; The Faulkner Society Gold Medal in Novel; The Gival Press 2017 Short Story Competition; Finalist, Glimmer Train’s Emerging Writers; and The Salamander Second Prize in Short Story. In addition, Rochelle’s short stories earned nominations for The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize.  Her stories have appeared in national magazines such as Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s Day, Woman’s World, Working Woman, Working Mother, and more.  Her first novel, Sadie in Love, was published in 2018 when she was 90 years old.  She lived in Highland Park, IL.

Praise for the Novel:

“Jerusalem as a Second Language tells a necessary story that I’m surprised hasn’t been told for American readers before. With wit and complexity, Rochelle Distelheim takes on two cultures whose differences are daunting and she manages to represent both with convincing detail and, most importantly, with sympathy. Her book builds a bridge over a deep chasm that her characters walk across with dignity and just enough mordant humor to convince us they’re real.” –Rosellen Brown, author of The Lake on Fire, Before and After, Tender Mercies, and Civil Wars

“Meet Manya, who grudgingly trades Russia for Israel. Shimmering with wit and bittersweet insights, Rochelle Distelheim’s Jerusalem as a Second Language is an emotional travelogue that begs the question, how does a secular Jew find her place in the world?” –Sally Koslow, author of Another Side of Paradise and the international bestseller, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

“Quick on the heels of her smart, charming, and deeply humane novel Sadie in Love (2018), Rochelle Distelheim’s Jerusalem as a Second Language introduces her devoted readers to a whole new cast of displaced characters. As secular Jews who have fled to Jerusalem from an increasingly corrupt and dangerous Russia, the Zalinikov family struggles against displacement, loneliness, and danger in a country that is as strange to them as it is compelling. Simultaneously tender and steely-eyed, often funny, and occasionally sorrowful, Distelheim’s elegant prose plucks at the heart of what it means to be a family at odds with their new country, and with each other.” –Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine

Blog Tour Schedule:

September 29th – Read with Me 702

September 30th – Grace J Reviewer Lady

October 1st – The Book Decoder

October 2nd – Jessica Belmont

October 5th – Suzy Approved Book Reviews

October 6th – Long and Short Reviews

October 7th – Storeybook Reviews

October 8th – Jennifer Tar Heel Reader

October 9th – Celtic Lady’s Reviews

October 12th – Collector of Book Boyfriends

October 13th – Beth’s Book Nook Blog

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: blog tour, fiction, Jerusalem As A Second Language, Jewish author, Jewish fiction, OTRPR, Over the River Public Relations, Religion, Rochelle Distelheim, women's fiction, women's interest

By otrpr Leave a Comment

“Sometimes it’s the so-called ordinary people who have the most interesting stories” — like Debra Monroe’s MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION

Since Debra Monroe’s new memoir, My Unsentimental Education (University of Georgia Press Hardcover; October 1, 2015, $24.95), debuted less than two weeks ago, stellar reviews have been pouring in. Sara Nelson, the Editor of Omnivoracious.com, suggests why Ms. Monroe’s memoir is so appealing:

“Nothing wrong with a good celebrity memoir – say, Chrissie Hynde, Elvis Costello, or Drew Barrymore. But sometimes it’s the so-called ordinary people who have the most interesting stories…My Unsentimental Education “reads like a country ballad,” one reviewer said – but I’d say it’s even better than that. (And I love country ballads.) I first came across Debra Monroe when she was pitching ideas to a magazine at which I worked – and then, as now, her voice was perfect: earthy and self-deprecating and funny and world weary – but not cute, or thank your greater power, not plucky, exactly, either. You know how some children just seem born into the wrong family? That’s Monroe, except that Monroe was also born in the wrong place and station.”

Debra Monroe is an outspoken advocate for the memoir of discovery (not recovery), and she writes compellingly about the new wave in memoir nonfiction in a recent article for Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/memoir-discovery-not-recovery/#continue_reading_post

This new trend in memoirs is resonating strongly with reviewers, and MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION is receiving rave reviews:

“While this book is engaging as an account of its author’s intellectual and occupational awakening as well as her adventures — or misadventures, really — in sex and relationships, it is above all a love story, but with poetry and fiction more than with any person, and that’s what makes it a pleasure to read.” —Chicago Tribune

“Blunt and salty, Debra Monroe’s new memoir traces the jagged line of her improbable trajectory: from a blue-collar girl in Spooner, Wis., to a professor in Texas State University’s Master of Fine Arts program…Monroe has written the sort of memoir she herself likes to read, built around the ordinary dramas of adolescence, dating and work.” —Houston Chronicle

“In its overarching trajectory, it’s a story of a woman determined to chart her own course through a maze of confinement. It dances through themes of domesticity, feminism and burgeoning sexuality. It risks becoming a story about the female rise to selfhood, which it is. But it’s also decidedly unique, distinct from the I-Made-It-Despite-the-Odds navel-gazing of many personal tales.The book is a map of Monroe’s road out and up, but also a testament to the distinctive voice she’s honed in the process.” —Dallas Morning News

“Monroe establishes the friction between two selves pulling in opposite directions through the blunt, no-nonsense style of her first memoir, “On the Outskirts of Normal.” With unwavering honesty and flashes of sly humor, she describes how, while the Spooner left hand continues to launch her toward Mr. Wrong and domestic drudgery, the right hand clings to the life raft of academic advancement with a steady, iron grip.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Monroe does not glamorize one moment of her early years with constant financial worries and juggling of complicated relationships with college and graduate school work that her father warned her would ‘educate her out of the marriage market.’…a rich literary life that sings from the pages of this book.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“She recounts her failed relationships with wit and candor in “My Unsentimental Education,” also offering forgiveness along the way.” —Wisconsin State Journal

Eager to learn more? You can read a great excerpt from MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION on Longreads.com.

Filed Under: Books, Memoir, Reviews & Features Tagged With: Debra Monroe, discovery memoir, feminism, feminist, Memoir, My Unsentimental Education, relationships, women's interest

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