Bess and Frima

When Bess and Frima―best friends, both nineteen and from the same Jewish background in the Bronx―get summer jobs in upstate hotels near Monticello, NY, in June 1940, they have visions of romance . . . but very different expectations and needs. Frima, who seeks safety in love, finds it with the “boy next door,” who is also Bess’s brother. Meanwhile, rebellious Bess renames herself Beth and plunges into a new life with Vinny, an Italian American, former Catholic, left-wing labor leader from San Francisco. Her actions are totally unacceptable to her family―which is fine with Beth. Will their young loves have happy endings? Yes and no, for the shadow of world war is growing, and Beth and Frima must grow up fast. As their love lives entangle with war, ambitions, religion, family, and politics―all kinds of conventional expectations―they face challenges they never dreamed of in their struggles for personal and creative growth.

Author: Alice Rosenthal

Publication Date: August 21, 2018

Categories: Fall 2018, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction

Description
About the Author

Description

“Bess and Frima is a spellbinding novel and lyric evocation of the Bronx and the Catskills in the years before and after World War II. But it also something deeper and more enduring: a fearless examination of female friendship, of politics and sexuality, of courtship and marriage, artistic desire and domestic duty. Alice Rosenthal reveals the inner life of her heroines with a patience that is both tender and ruthless. She’s not just writing about them, of course. She’s writing about all of us, about the pleasures and perils of chasing the American dream.”
―Steve Almond, author of New York Times bestseller Candyfreak and the forthcoming Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country?

“Alice Rosenthal’s new novel crackles with life! Through the eyes of Bess and Frima, we learn of the personal toll of the war as they face disaster, heartache, and the bittersweet contradictions of family and tradition. Rosenthal’s writing is so vivid you can hear everything from the Yiddish jokes to the strains of a Beethoven sonata played on old upright in the Borscht Belt. When you are not moved to tears, you will literally laugh out loud!”
―Elaine Elision, co-author of Wherever There’s a Fight, winner of the California Book Awards’ Gold Medal

About the Author

Alice Rosenthal was born and raised in 1941 in the same Bronx neighborhood as her protagonists, though a generation later. After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from NYU, she married, divorced, and settled in the Village-Chelsea area of Manhattan, where she maintained her lifestyle by copyediting for academic presses. In 1976, she moved to San Francisco and began a new worklife teaching ESL at City College of San Francisco. She loves reading, gardening, baking, cooking, making things with her hands, and shmoozing with her friends and family. She is the author of the novel Take the D Train, as well as articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Jewish Currents magazine.