The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The unusual juxtaposition, in which 'after' comes first, is important in Slor's winding narrative of why and how this little family has fractured into four pieces, like a plate thrown against a wall.

Masha's chapters take place in 2008, Anna's in 2007 - after and before the younger woman's disappearance. Her new boundaries may be faith-based, but they're also effective at allowing her to keep her distance from the sad situation she discovers between her parents.īook Reviews New Thriller Challenges Readers To Take Another Look At 'These Women' She warns her father she'll be turning off her cell phone for all of Shabbat. She's afraid that she'll be pulled back into family drama, afraid that she'll miss David too much, afraid that she won't be able to keep up her comforting new routine. When her father calls and asks her to return home because Anna, just 16, has disappeared, Masha is torn. She happily melts into a place filled with sunshine, easy manners, and Jewish culture, to the point of regaining many of its religious rituals.

While their parents were glad to leave using their Judaism as an exit strategy, the family is almost wholly secular - until Masha makes aliyah to Israel on a Birthright airplane ticket, falls in love with the country, and then falls in love with a man named David. Masha and Anna are sisters, born in Soviet Ukraine, whose parents immigrated with them to the United States when Masha was six and Anna (Anastasia) still a baby. Perhaps that should change, because not only does this American city have stories to tell, but its Riverwest neighborhood, full of angst and creativity, is the setting of Zhanna Slor's debut novel At the End of the World, Turn Left. A few excellent novels visit Milwaukee (notably Neil Gaiman's American Gods and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski), but it's not a well-known literary hotbed.