At the tender age of twelve, Bessie is exiled to Siberia because of her brothers' anti-czarist activities. At twenty-five, she loses her husband and baby girl to the ravages of civil war in revolutionary Russia. At forty, she faces down Nazi hoodlums as she tries to disrupt a pro-Hitler rally in Madison Square Garden. At fifty-five, she is driven to an underground life by McCarthyite persecution and rejection by her own son. At sixty-two, she squares off against racists during civil rights campaigns in the South--and nearly loses the loyalty of her beloved daughter.
At eighty-eight, Bessie is still making trouble and still making jokes. Bessie is more than a survivor--she's a winner, for her spirits are never dampened, her humor never fails, and her faith in human love and potential is never shaken, however long it might take for her dreams of a better world to become real.
Bessie is a profoundly optimistic novel about a woman who is a leader in a generation of fighters and poets. An enchanting novel from an engaging, talented writer, it is a masterful achievement of passion, grace and wit, echoing with the honest, earthy voice of the heroine--a rebel, a lover, a mother, a grandmother, a nurse, a Jew, an extraordinary human being.
