Giving up America

In her "remarkable first novel" (Entertainment Weekly), Pearl Abraham "deftly lift(ed) the opaque curtain from the closed Hasidic world" (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 the non-Hasidic Daniel based on Kabbalistic interpretations -- but Deena ignores her father's prediction and she and Daniel begin to renovate their dream house in Brooklyn. When Daniel brings a beautiful Gentile coworker home from the office one day, their subsequent three-way friendship -- and the betrayals it breeds -- leads Deena to contemplate where her true home lies, and how far she is willing to travel to find it.