Beyond the Pale
1997
First Published
4.33
Average Rating
406
Number of Pages
Beyond the Pale—winner of the Lambda Literary Award—tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich’s odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York. Interwoven with her tale is that Chava Meyer, who was attended by Gurvich at her birth and grew up to survive the pogrom that took the lives of her parents. Throughout the book, historical background plays a large part: Jewish faith and traditions, the practice of midwifery, the horrific conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and New York sweatshops, and the determined work of labor unionists and suffragists.
Avg Rating
4.33
Number of Ratings
1,145
5 STARS
52%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
12%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads
Author
Elana Dykewomon
Author · 5 books
Elana Dykewomon is an activist, an author, and a teacher and has a fiercely dedicated readership who have been eagerly awaiting her next novel for a dozen years. One of the finest thinkers—and writers—the women’s movement has produced, she has worked for the last fifteen years as an editor and teacher of composition and creative writing, both independently and for San Francisco State University. (from the publisher's website) Red Room - Elana Dykewomon's Biography
