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Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Spotlight: Bess & Frima by Alice Rosenthal


Author: Alice Rosenthal
Publisher: She Writes Press
Date of publication: August 2018

When Bess and Frima—best friends, both nineteen and from the same Jewish background in the Bronx—get summer jobs in upstate hotels near Monticello, NY, in June 1940, they have visions of romance . . . but very different expectations and needs. Frima, who seeks safety in love, finds it with the “boy next door,” who is also Bess’s brother. Meanwhile, rebellious Bess renames herself Beth and plunges into a new life with Vinny, an Italian American, former Catholic, left-wing labor leader from San Francisco. Her actions are totally unacceptable to her family—which is fine with Beth. Will their young loves have happy endings? Yes and no, for the shadow of world war is growing, and Beth and Frima must grow up fast. As their love lives entangle with war, ambitions, religion, family, and politics—all kinds of conventional expectations—they face challenges they never dreamed of in their struggles for personal and creative growth.

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About Alice Rosenthal


Alice Rosenthal was born and raised in 1941 in the same Bronx neighborhood as her protagonists, though a generation later. After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from NYU, she married, divorced, and settled in the Village-Chelsea area of Manhattan, where she maintained her lifestyle by copyediting for academic presses. In 1976, she moved to San Francisco and began a new worklife teaching ESL at City College of San Francisco. She loves reading, gardening, baking, cooking, making things with her hands, and shmoozing with her friends and family. She is the author of the novel Take the D Train, as well as articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Jewish Currents magazine.

Tour Stops
Monday, October 1st: Dwell in Possibility
Wednesday, October 3rd: Instagram: @the_need_to_read
Thursday, October 4th: Helen’s Book Blog
Friday, October 5th: The Pages In-Between
Monday, October 8th: Tina Says…
Tuesday, October 9th: Iwriteinbooks’s blog
Wednesday, October 10th: Kritters Ramblings
Tuesday, October 16th: From the TBR Pile
Friday, October 19th: What Is That Book About