Shaaray Tefila Book Club

In person only

Members only

Out of building

Join the Shaaray Tefila Book Club on Zoom at the synagogue for a dinner and discussion of The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant. Location will be sent upon registration.

Register by May 29.

About The Boston Girl_

2016 Audie Award Finalist for Best Female Narrator

New York Times bestseller

An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People)—from the acclaimed author of The Red Tent.

Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world. “Diamant brings to life a piece of feminism’s forgotten history” (Good Housekeeping) in this “inspirational…page-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth century” (Booklist).

About the Author

Best known for her 1997 biblically themed novel,​ The Red Tent​— the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob in the Book of Genesis, and his four wives — Anita Diamant has written four other novels, a collection of essays,​ Pitching My Tent, and several nonfiction books about contemporary Jewish life. She is also a prizewinning journalist whose work has appeared regularly in the ​Boston Globe Magazine​ and​ Parenting​ Magazine.