When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Here’s a confession: I never read under the covers with a flashlight. Didn’t love Harriet the Spy or Little House on the Prairie. I didn’t become a reader until junior high when a handful of books were passed around: The Godfather, Helter Skelter, Jaws, The Shining and my favorite, In Cold Blood. And later in high school when poetry wrapped its scarves around me. Lowell, Plath, Sexton, Rimbaud, O’Hara, Larkin, Ashbery. Thin volumes I found and devoured, the meaning mostly out of reach but not the pleasure. The exquisite privacy, discovering a new language. Sometimes people say books find us. I’m not one of them.
Three books that changed your life?
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Betsy Lerner 
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Fear of Flying
The Prophet
Bonus book: The Happy Hooker 😂
Anne of Green Gables
The Stone Diaries
February
Hope for the Flowers – Trina Paulus
Night – Elie Wiesel
The Seven Storey Mountain – Thomas Merton
The Dick and Jane primers (this needs explanation – this was when it clicked, that letters made words, and words made stories. Became an avid reader in first grade)
Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons
Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
“Three books that changed your life?”
Harriet the Spy
African Genesis
Dear Mr. Capote
The first inspired me to be a writer, the second freed my mind, and the third showed me what could be done.
The Silver Crown
Absent in the Spring
Dept. of Speculation
(1960) Time for the Stars – Heinlein :As a teenager… it was fun to dream.
(1999) A Civil Action – Harr :As a plaintiff… ‘Write one, scare the opposition.’
(2006) Perfect Murder Perfect Town – Schiller :Memoir… Damn, writing is hard work.
Crime and Punishment made me want to be a writer. The Little Prince and One Hundred Years of Solitude inspired my love of magic realism. My Dad gave me Gulliver’s Travels and White Fang as my first books from him. Also Scholastic Books and The Hidden Staircase. As a rule follower, I beg forgiveness for the longish answer. I am a novel writer.