Award-winning novel set in pre-1967 Israel/Palestine "Edges, O Israel, O Palestine" by Leora Skolkin-Smith Edited by Grace Paley

    /24-7PressRelease/ - NEW YORK, NY, July 23, 2006 - EDGES was recently a recipient of PEN/Faulkner Foundation National Writer in the School Award Stipend. The novel has been a National Women Studies Association Conference Selection, a "Bloomsbury Review" Pick for "Favorite Books of the Last 25 Years", a Jewish Book Council Selection 2005, and was featured at The Virginia Festival of the Book, 2006.

Ms. Skolkin-Smith has received grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, The Department of Cultural affairs, and P.E.N. American Center. She was awarded a Teaching Fellowship for graduate work at Sarah Lawrence College where she holds a BA and MFA in writing.



"Edges" is a dark and penetrating look at pre-1967 Israel and Palestine through the eyes of a 14 year old Liana Bialik. After her American father's suicide, Liana's Jerusalem-born mother decides to take Liana and her sister back to her homeland, where her family had lived for four generations. Once they get to Israel Liana, who feels overwhelmed and suffocated by her mother, begins to detach herself from her. She embarks on a mission of self-discovery to learn why her mother does not speak about her father and why he took his own life. Edges is well-written, powerful in both imagery and subject matter..."
-Jewish Book World, Spring 2006
Vol. 24, Number 1

"Edges is an elegant and moving novel. Leora Skolkin-Smith has that rare gift of the writer who can convey the sensibility — the essence of a place and its people — with precision and clarity. A provocative debut."
--Katharine Weber, book critic and author of TRIANGLE, THE LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSIC LESSON, and OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR


"Where, and how and to whom do we really belong? Skolkin's brilliant debut novel is a hypnotic meditation on the ever-changing boundaries of love and need. A coming of age story of the bond between a young American and her powerful mother, etched in a wartime Mideast as shifting and dangerous and mysterious as the Israeli desert."
--Caroline Leavitt, columnist at "The Boston Globe" and author of GIRLS IN TROUBLE


""EDGES" is a novel told with restraint and poetic precision...memorable (for the) the sense of place that Ms. Skolkin-Smith has achieved -- the sunny and scary Jerusalem and countryside -- and the hope, love, hate and fatalism of the groups, Palestinian and Israeli, living amongst and apart from each other..."
-- Robert Whitcomb "The Providence Journal"


"An elegantly written, quite moving novel that has a lot to say about love, identity, history and the meaning of nationality. The book is worth reading alone for its superb language, but it is gripping and unforgettable as well in its story telling and evocation of place and emotions. It is a wonderful novel by an author with a quite accomplished voice and style, one well deserving a wide and receptive audience"
--Oscar Hijuelos, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, THE MAMBO KINGS SING SONGS OF LOVE

GLAD DAY BOOKS was founded by Robert Nichols and Grace Paley.

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