Novels

Street Corner Dreams

Family, romance, and gangsters support and thwart Golda, Ben, and Morty from achieving their dreams.

Golda gives up independence to marry her widowed brother-in-law, Ben, and care for baby Morty; later, Ben's business mistakes cause financial disaster, forcing Morty to bargain with gangsters and sacrifice his love and career-and perhaps the ability to ever go home again-to save his father.

How to Make a Life

A sweeping saga that follows four generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel.

How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other's differences--or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world.

Florence Reiss Kraut

Florence Reiss Kraut is a native New Yorker, raised and educated in New York City.  She holds a BA in English and a MSW in social work, and she worked for over thirty years as a family therapist before retiring to concentrate on her writing and travel widely.  

Blog

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Thinking about Regrets
Thinking about Regrets

Each year, as I and many of my loved ones celebrate the High Holidays, I take time for self-reflection, and the word “regret”—a powerful word—often comes to me. What are my regrets as I look back on the years before?

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Women and Barbie
Women and Barbie

This past weekend I saw a play and a movie—thought provoking, emotional and sometimes funny—that brought me back to the years I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties.

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Early Praise for Street Corner Dreams

  • "With clean, crisp storytelling we can't help but be as seduced as her characters who are lured into the dangerous and seedy world of gangs, the Mobs and the infamous Murder Inc. A great page-turner of a novel."

    Howard J. Smith, author of the novels Meeting Mozart and Beethoven in Love, Opus 139

  • “The characters all have dreams of a better life—of security and the opportunity to build something new. But dreams have their price, and irrevocable choices and sacrifices must be made. The enduring power of family is at the heart of this compelling read.”

    Virginia Weir, author of Stay a Friend As Long as You Can and The Two Elizabeths

  • "This is writing at its most open, forgiving and tender—which is to say, this is a crucial, sense making, compassionate book that I couldn’t put down."

    June Gould, Phd. author of The Writer in All of Us and Beyond the Margins: Rethinking the Art and Craft of Writing and the novel In the Shadow of Trains

  • "Sometimes love and sacrifice aren’t enough, but hope glimmers through for this unforgettable family that you will root for to the very end."

    Rebecca D'Harlingue, author of The Lines Between Us and The Map Colorist