Radiant as the Stars: A Novel, with Elaine Elinson

Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  This program is in partnership with the Workers Circle / Arbeter Ring of Northern California.

As thousands of Jews flee the violence of Tsarist Russia for the promise of America, twenty-year-old Anna Reader makes a dangerous choice: she returns to the Ukrainian shtetl her family escaped six years earlier. Driven by idealism and a fierce belief in justice, Anna joins her cousin Chava in the Jewish Labor Bund, a growing movement challenging oppression on the eve of revolution. But the homeland she remembers has become a place of suspicion, political intrigue, and constant danger. Viewed as an outsider after her years in Chicago, Anna struggles to earn the trust of the radicals she once called friends. When Chava is arrested by the Tsarist authorities, Anna risks everything to save her. As betrayal closes in and the threat of imprisonment looms, she must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for her beliefs—and whether survival itself is worth the cost. Set against the turbulent years before the Russian Revolution, this gripping historical novel is a story of courage, loyalty, and one young woman’s fight for justice in a world on the brink of upheaval.

Elaine Elinson is coauthor of the award-winning Wherever There’s a Fight and Development Debacle, which was banned by the Marcos dictatorship. Named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, her work has been published widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. and the Jewish Book Council. Elinson served two decades as the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News. She speaks Russian and sings in Yiddish.