Women’s Havura Book Club

Please join Northbrook Community Synagogue for the next Women’s Havura Book Club in person at the Shul, Wednesday, September 25 @ 7 PM to discuss the book, The Boston Girl, by Anita Diamant.

An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People) – from the acclaimed author of the Red Tent.

Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of America womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters, Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine – a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. she wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naive girl she once was.

Written with the same attentions to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels best sellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding