Product Description

Richly plotted, animated by beautifully realized characters, and steeped in magnificent old-world detail, Malkeh and Her Children is the captivating epic of the remarkable Mandelkern family as they weather the storm of the Russian Revolution. At the family's center stands the indomitable Malkeh, an intelligent and beautiful woman, who marries Yoysef, an itinerant tailor. Together, the young couple embrace the simple joys and traditions of Jewish life in a tightly knit Russian city.

But soon their safe world is shattered with the dawn of the tsar's reign of terror. As famines and cholera epidemics sweep the nation, the Jews swiftly become scapegoats, with the Russian peasants taking their revenge in violent pogroms. Against this land torn by revolution and bloodshed, Malkeh and Yoysef's children must grow up and pursue their own destinies.

In a novel that sweeps from provincial life in a Jewish ghetto, to the streets of Lenin's St. Petersburg, rife with revolt, to Moscow in the chaos after the civil war, author Marjorie Edelson has woven a timeless tapestry of the old country with both its torments and its joys. Malkeh and Her Children is a loving evocation of powerful family values and traditions -- an imaginative work of love and hope that transports us into the life of a proud woman, whose courage and love will leave no one unmoved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1266073 in Books
• Published on: 1992-09-29
• Released on: 1992-09-29
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.50" w x 6.00" l, 2.09 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

From Kirkus Reviews
Inspired by family legends of life in pre-Revolutionary Russia, Edelson creates a refreshingly earthy first novel featuring an obstinate provincial Jewish woman whose children are destined to emigrate to America. The Jews of Dagda might have predicted that pretty young Malkeh, daughter of an impoverished local teacher, would not be satisfied with the traditional life of the generations of women who preceded her. To begin with, proud and headstrong Malkeh married an itinerant tailor, Yoysef Mandelkern, for the simple reason that he loved her. And once married, Malkeh proceeds to found a school for Jewish women, allow the steward of the local estate to become her patron, and raise a brood of adventurous children who will stir up all kinds of gossip at home before they set sail for America. Not all of Malkeh's actions are appreciated, even by her family--her children's frequent complaints that she neglects them in favor of her work seem deliberately aimed at today's readers--and there are social repercussions when one son joins the Revolution and a daughter lives in sin with a decidedly non-Jewish gambler. But, fortunately, the second generation's chutzpa is perfectly suited to the life they will design for themselves in San Francisco--the city to which they escape one by one. Having weathered pogroms, epidemics, war in their native Russia, and crippling poverty in their adopted land, the Mandelkerns have learned the value and importance of family solidarity. Edelson's exploration of the wisdom and generosity with which her characters accommodate one another's shortcomings makes this a satisfying tale. Life-affirming fiction--sentimental, perhaps, but enjoyably so. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"Here is a book to live with, to laugh and cry over....

Once started it is impossible to put down."

Jane Aiken Hodge

Author of First Night

"Marjorie Edelson is a great storyteller.

This book is a page turner, rich in detail with a powerful narrative drive."

Ruth Sidransky

Author of In Silence

"Malkeh and Her Children etches itself on the memory with its powerful rendering of lives in a supposedly civilized society at its very nadir."

Naomi Ragen

Author of Jepthe's Daughter and Sotah

From the Back Cover
"Here is a book to live with, to laugh and cry over....

Once started it is impossible to put down."

Jane Aiken Hodge

Author of First Night

"Marjorie Edelson is a great storyteller.

This book is a page turner, rich in detail with a powerful narrative drive."

Ruth Sidransky

Author of In Silence

"Malkeh and Her Children etches itself on the memory with its powerful rendering of lives in a supposedly civilized society at its very nadir."

Naomi Ragen

Author of Jepthe's Daughter and Sotah