November 2020 list by Bernadette L.
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Homeland Elegies: a Novel
by Ayad Akhtar
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home
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The Lost Shtetl
by Max Gross
A tiny Jewish shtetl that has peacefully escaped the devastations of the Holocaust and Cold War is wrenchingly forced into the 21st century by a marriage dispute that spins out of control.
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The Orchard: a Novel
by David Hopen
Reinventing himself upon moving to a glitzy Miami suburb, a student at an Orthodox Jewish academy is welcomed into a circle of popular students whose faith is unconventionally tested by their charismatic rabbi.
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The Sowing Season
by Katie Powner
Forced to sell his family farm after sacrificing everything, sixty-three-year-old Gerrit Laninga no longer knows what to do with himself. Fifteen-year-old Rae Walters has growing doubts about The Plan her parents set to help her follow in her father's footsteps. When their paths cross just as they need a friend the most, Gerrit's and Rae's lives change in unexpected ways.
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Transcendent Kingdom
by Yaa Gyasi
A follow-up to the best-selling Homegoing finds a sixth-year PhD candidate grappling with the childhood faith of the evangelical church in which she was raised while researching the science behind the suffering that has devastated her Ghanaian immigrant family.
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When We Were Young & Brave
by Hazel Gaynor
Enduring privation when Japan declares war on England, a teacher at a British missionary school is sent to a distant internment camp, where she provides support and instruction to incarcerated children taken from their parents.
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