Blog Tour and Giveaway ~
Historical Virtual Book Tour Presents....
Where
do I go
by Beverly
Magid
It’s
1908 and Leah and her boys have immigrated to New York’s Lower East Side to
live with her brothers after surviving a pogrom in their Russian village. She
is determined to find a home in America but the conditions are harsher than she
expected. The garment sweat shops are brutal to work in and it’s essential that
her son Benny works after school to help with expenses. Unbeknownst to her he
runs errands for the local bookie/gangster. Life isn’t what Leah hoped for, but
she’s a fighter and not willing to accept the awful conditions at Wollowitz’s
Factory. She’s on a journey to find her own voice, to find a place for herself
and her sons, to find a little beauty and romance in her life.
Excerpt
A few older Jewish women passed her and Leah noticed
that they still wore sheitels, wigs, which some had covered
with a kerchief. She thought back to the day she and Morris had married. Fanny,
the matchmaker, had not been entirely honest with either of them, anxious to
close the deal.
“I want a scholarly husband,” Leah had insisted, but
even at sixteen, she didn’t want one who was only interested in prayers and
Torah. Morris, twelve years older, had requested a smart, strong wife who could
give him lots of children, but didn’t expect to marry a rebellious, stubborn girl.
When the wedding ceremony was completed and Leah refused to shave her hair in
Orthodox Jewish custom, Morris was outraged and even angrier when she refused
to give up her secular books, novels by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and poetry by
Pushkin.
“They are blasphemous,” he yelled, while she shouted
back, “I will never give them up, never.”
She made it worse by speaking Russian, a language
considered forbidden by the Orthodox community who insisted that Jews only
speak Yiddish, not the language of their oppressors. Finally, in a compromise,
she agreed to keep her thick braids covered and never speak Russian in public.
She would promise nothing more. Leah had always wanted to go her own way, a
path her father had encouraged, but strangely not her mother.
“If you must disagree, keep your opinions to
yourself,” she had counseled, much to Leah’s surprise even at a young age. “Men
can be very hard to live with, otherwise. Not everyone is like your father.”
Morris certainly was not like him and Leah tried keeping quiet, but most times
she couldn’t.
As she walked by a storefront, she stopped a moment to
see her reflection in the store window. A tallish, young woman appearing a bit
older than her twenty-eight years stared back at her, reddish-brown hair, still
braided, but uncovered, wearing a long skirt and shirtwaist, looking like any
average American woman. If only she could really feel American, feel she was at
home.
Giveaway
During the Book Blast we will be giving away a signed
copy of WHERE DO I GO! To enter, please enter here.
Giveaway
Rules
• Giveaway ends
at 11:59pm EST on February 2nd. You must be 18 or older to enter.
• Giveaway is open to residents in the US only.
– Only
one entry per household.
• All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not
cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and
the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.
• Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is
chosen.
Beverly Magid
Beverly Magid, before writing her novel, was a
journalist and an entertainment and celebrity PR executive, who interviewed
many luminaries, including John Lennon, Jim Croce and the Monty Python gang,
and as a publicist represented clients in music, tv and film, ranging from
Whoopi Goldberg, John Denver and Dolly Parton to Tom Skerritt, Martin Landau,
Kathy Ireland and Jacqueline Bisset.
Beverly is a longtime west coast resident who still
considers herself a New Yorker. Among the social issues she’s passionate about
is literacy and she worked with KorehLA to mentor elementary children in
reading. Also she has been an advocate for Jewish World Watch, an organization
dedicated to working against genocide and to aid the victims of war atrocities.
On a lighter side, she is also a volunteer at the Los Angeles Zoo, monitoring
animal behavior for their Research Department.
She is a news and political junkie who supports
environmental, animal and human rights issues. She believes most passionately
that “We must remain vigilant to the those who would erode the rights of people
around the world and work to defeat them.”
For more information, please visit Beverly Magid’s website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.
Where Do I Go by Beverly Magid
Publication Date: October 9, 2017
BeWrite Press
Paperback & eBook; 138 Pages
Genre:
Fiction/His
I wish you all the best with the rest of your tour!
ReplyDeleteI have just entered! Wish me Luck!!
ReplyDelete