Here’s What’s Next: Events and A New Project

SUNFLOWERS

SUMMER AGAIN

Now is the time for Sunflowers and Queen Anne’s Lace. Days are getting noticeably shorter. I am trying to enjoy every minute of the wonderful and fleeting summer days, but my writing is taking up my time and thoughts.

A New Writing Project

I’m starting a new project—which is what I call the next book when I am beginning to write it, and before it has the form and substance of a novel. I am writing notes in longhand in spiral notebooks, imagining characters and scenes. I am researching, researching, researching, which is what one does when one writes historical novels.

Every time I begin a new book, I'm filled with excitement and even a little fear. My mind brims with possibilities—stories demanding to be told, characters whispering their secrets, scenes I dream. Yet somehow, no matter how far I wander in my imagination, I find myself drawn back to the same fertile ground: immigrants navigating the tumultuous 20th century.

The pull to immigrant stories stems from my own family history.

My four grandparents came to America from Poland at the turn of the 20th Century, when waves of East European and Italians were free to come here.

But my in-laws immigrated in 1923, just before the 1924 Immigration Act slammed the door shut on poor Middle European Jews and Italians.

The purpose of this Immigration Act, which was passed 100 years ago but feels so familiar today, was simply to keep out those immigrants without connections and protection—those who spoke no English, had no degrees or education, and no money.

That timing—that narrow window between the time when desperate families fled from the violence of crime and pogroms, or rushed toward tantalizing financial opportunity in America—has always haunted me.

What if my in-laws had tried to come a year later?

Which descendants would never have been born? Or worse, would have been murdered in the killing camps of Nazi Germany?

My Beautiful In-Laws

My first two novels emerged from this wellspring of inherited memory. Both were immigrant stories following families as they fled hardship, persecution, and terror, then struggled to remake themselves as Americans. In my first book, How to Make a Life, I explored the universal immigrant experience: the grinding poverty, the unexpected betrayals, the small victories that felt monumental over four generations of a Jewish immigrant family. My second book, Street Corner Dreams, delved deeper into the harsh realities of Brooklyn's criminal underworld and its devastating impact on vulnerable families trying to build new lives.

Now I'm embarking on my most ambitious project yet—a dual-timeline novel that bridges past and near present trauma. The spark came from watching heartbreaking scenes created by the Family Separation Policy during the 2018-2019 immigration crackdowns in the first of President Trump’s administrations. I couldn't stop thinking about the children who were lost in our border systems, some forever severed from their parents. How many families were permanently destroyed? How many children simply vanished into bureaucratic chaos?

From this contemporary tragedy, my new novel began to take shape.

I envisioned a plot centered on a social worker searching for a missing baby along the Big Bend River in Texas. The social worker is sensitive to migrants’ suffering because of her own family history—a great-grandmother who survived WWII as a Partisan in the forests of Belarus.

But as I developed the social worker’s backstory, her great-grandmother’s voice grew stronger and more insistent. Her wartime experiences as a Jewish Partisan in the forests of Belarus (a little-known story of Jewish resistance to the Nazi atrocities) began demanding equal space, suggesting something more complex than a simple contemporary thriller.

The past wasn’t just informing the present—it was actively speaking to it, creating a dialogue across decades.

Jewish Partisans in Belarus in WWII

This is how my single-timeline story evolved into something far more ambitious: a dual-timeline historical novel that weaves together the immigrant experience of the WWII survivor with the refugee crisis of today. The grandmother's courageous survival story and her granddaughter's rescue mission became mirror narratives, each illuminating the other.

Stay with me on this journey as I explore how these two timelines will intersect, how historical trauma echoes through generations, and why immigrant stories—whether set in the 1940s or 2018 or 2025—continue to hold such urgent relevance for our times. The more things change, the more the fundamental human experience of seeking safety, belonging, and hope remains achingly familiar. As I proceed on my writing I’ll be sending out tantalizing tidbits from the novel, and, when it’s time, asking for your help choosing the Title and the Cover.

Faye Schulman, Partisan Photographer

Some stories choose their writers. This one chose me, demanding to be told across the span of nearly a century, proving once again why I can never truly retire from immigrant narratives. They are, quite simply, the stories of who we are and who we've always been—people in search of home.

Awards and Accolades

I am excited to report that each of my books has recently received an award this past quarter.

“Street Corner Dreams” won first place in the Goethe category for Late Historical Fiction at the Chanticleer Awards.

“How to Make a Life” won an award for digital Audio Books, and this one was narrated by Justine Reiss, my niece.

Upcoming Events

These are the big events:

The first is on Saturday, September 20th, when I am giving a talk at The Richmond, Massachusetts Free Public Library where I will be presenting at the “Lively World Series Program” talking about my books.

Then, the very next day, on Sunday, September 21 I will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival with three of my colleagues from She Writes Press, selling books and talking to the public.

On Saturday, October 25 I will be at the Boston Book Festival again with my colleague writers. We are calling ourselves

And these are the books we will be selling

And finally on Wednesday, October 29 at 7PM I will be at my own Jewish Community Center of Harrison, in cooperation with the Harrison Public Library, where I will be interviewing my friend and fellow author Barbara Stark-Nemon about her third novel which will be fresh off the press on September 16, 2025.

BOOK CLUBS & EVENTS

I love hearing from my readers. I welcome your comments and your questions, and any stories you want to share about your own families. That’s why I love book clubs. Let’s meet in person or on Zoom, and share your thoughts and your own insights about families, and we can enrich each other’s lives.

We are booking events and book clubs for the fall, winter and Spring. Be sure to contact me so we can come to your book club either in person or on Zoom