<div>The acclaimed author shares a “wonderfully entrancing” tale of family secrets and self-discovery in a Brooklyn Chasidic community (Lit Hub). Winner of the 2020 Jewish Fiction Award On Division Avenue, just a block up from the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her ten children range in age from thirteen to thirty-nine. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first floor of their house. Her daughter Tzila Ruchel lives on the second. She and her husband Yidel have a happy marriage and a full life. But into this life of counted blessings comes a surprise. At fifty-seven years old, Surie is pregnant. It is a shock. An aberration. A public display of private life. Surie feels exposed, ashamed. She is unable to share the news, even with her husband. And so, for the first time in her life, she has a secret—one that slowly separates her from the community. Goldie Goldbloom’s On Division is an excavation of one woman’s life, a story of awakening at middle age, and a thoughtful examination of the dynamics of self and collective identity. It is a rare portrait of a long, happy marriage, and a steady-eyed look inside insular communities that also celebrates their comforts.</div>

On Division

<div>Winner of the 2008 AWP Award for the Novel From 1941 to 1947, eighteen thousand Italian prisoners of war were sent to Australia. The Italian surrender that followed the downfall of Mussolini had created a novel circumstance: prisoners who theoretically were no longer enemies. Many of these exiles were sent to work on isolated farms, unguarded. The Paperbark Shoe is the unforgettable story of Gin Boyle—an albino, a classically trained pianist, and a woman with a painful past. Disavowed by her wealthy stepfather, her unlikely savior is the farmer Mr. Toad—a little man with a taste for women's corsets. Together with their two children, they weather the hardship of rural life and the mockery of their neighbors. But with the arrival of two Italian prisoners of war, their lives are turned upside down. Thousands of miles from home, Antonio and John find themselves on Mr. and Mrs. Toad's farm, exiles in the company of exiles. The Paperbark Shoe is a remarkable novel about the far-reaching repercussions of war, the subtle violence of displacement, and what it means to live as a captive—in enemy country, and in one's own skin.</div>

Goldie Goldbloom
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Books By Goldie Goldbloom (2 Books)

On Division

The Paperbark Shoe

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