Exploring the turbulent history that led to the migration of one-and-a-half million Jews from czarist Russia to America, Horodno Burning is a love letter to literature, freedom, and Jewish survival.
In the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement, Esther Leving, a brilliant young bibliophile, chafes at male dominance, religious dogma, and antisemitism. Bernard Garfinkle, a religious Jew and the son of a vodka distiller, hides a shameful secret—in a culture that worships books, he can’t read. Despite their literary and religious differences, they fall in love. Esther teaches Bernard to read, and he in turn builds her a bookshop. They start a family, but when ferocious pogroms target Russian Jews, they must confront violent oppression. How Estes, Bernard, and their friends respond will determine not only who they become but also whether they live.
Michael Freed-Thall began writing when upon retirement from being a teacher and principal in Vermont. He started with his own family history — the arranged marriage between his great-great-grandparents, Estes and Bernard, at ages twelve and fourteen; escape from service in the czar’s army; pogroms; a harrowing trip from the Pale of Settlement to America; a reverence for books; and radical politics. Ultimately, those fragments and his overactive imagination led him to write this novel about literature, freedom, and Jewish survival.
Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, House Arrest, and The Lost Women of Azalea Court, forthcoming in 2022. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women’s Prize, The Women’s National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recent essay publications include Lilith, Ms Magazine, LitHub, Guernica, and The Writers Chronicle. She lives in Northampton, MA.
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Special thanks to the Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, Vermont for supporting local authors and world history.
