In this compelling collection of stories, we find immigrants everywhere: in the poignant and doomed relationships between the documented and undocumented: in a squalid encampment by the Rio Grande, where a young mother sends her daughter over the bridge to the U.S. alone; in the multicultural heart of New York, where a Jewish woman seeks a loan from a Muslim bank manager to fund her cancer treatment; and in a New England home, where bats in the attic are threatening the last vestiges of stability for a divorced and desperate middle-aged woman and her twenty-something Chinese American tenant.
These stories explore the deep ambiguities in how we perceive each other. Readers will grow to love Friedman’s characters, despite their flaws, as they grapple toward a deeper caring for the world around them.
D. Dina Friedman is the author of two award-winning novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon & Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), and one book of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press). In this collection, Friedman draws on her childhood in multicultural Queens, her adulthood in rural New England, her travels to India and the U.S./Mexico border, and her years as an activist working for Middle East peace and immigration justice. Originally from New York City, Dina moved to western Massachusetts in the 1980s, where she now lives next door to a farm with six hundred cows. Visit her website ddinafriedman.com and subscribe to her blog on the writing life at www.ddinafriedman.substack.com