A Favorite Historical Fiction

Published in 2015, this was my second venture into author Anita Diamant, the first being “The Red Tent.’ You won’t find many similarities between these two books, with “The Red Tent” set in historical biblical times and this book about the life of Addie Baum, born in Boston in 1900 to Russian-Jewish immigrant “Old World” parents who were unprepared for their new life in America. Addie’s story begins when 85 year old Addie is asked by her 22 year old granddaughter what life was like for her in the early 20th Century. With great humor and candor Addie delights in telling the story of her spirited life and how she grabbed at all the new and exciting choices she had, exasperating her traditional parents to their limits.

Through her stories Addie described how she grasped on to education, experimented with everything from new dance steps to higher hemlines and felt the liberation of women to do things like pursuing a dream of working and living independently at a time when much of society frowned on such things. She remembered the conflicts and how she had to make tough choices to use common sense to keep from making ruinous decisions. Through her intimate stories Addie unfolds a great breath of her life experience, passing it along to her second generation. What a Gift!

As I read this book it made me nostalgic and sad that I did not take the opportunity to learn more of the history of my own grandparents and how this formed their lives. Where we came from and how we got here are gone in an instant as we die and take this history to the grave. I think now of how beautiful the conversations could have been with my grandparents if I had only asked, “Grandma, what was your life like when you were growing up?”

5 Stars