Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum: A Day of Small Beginnings

(Fiction, 368 pp. 2006)

The relationship between the spirit of the elderly, childless Friedl and three generations of a secular Jewish family whose “faithless” patriarch fled Poland for America in 1906 permeates this novel, which interweaves history, mysticism, and magic realism with the reality of anti-Semitism and spiritual redemption. 

• Discussion Questions and Reader’s Guide
• Kirkus Review
  • Review by Laurel Maury, Los Angeles Times, December 4, 2006
  • Review by Irina Reyn, Forward, December 8, 2006
  • Review by Christine Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 2006
• Stephanie Pervos Bregman interviews Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum, Chicago Jewish United Fund, October 31, 2011
• Connie Martinson interviews Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum (video 28 min.)