Anna Solomon's debut novel "The Little Bride"

In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as  “. . . a plot-driven novel conveyed in crisp, descriptive, and thought-provoking prose via an engagingly intelligent third-person narrator. . . . an auspicious debut” and recommend it to both adult and precocious young adult readers.  via the late examiner.com

Former NPR correspondant Anna Solomon's debut novel, The Little Bride, is published today by Riverhead Books, a division of New York publisher Penguin USA. In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as “. . . a plot-driven novel conveyed in crisp, descriptive, and thought-provoking prose via an engagingly intelligent third-person narrator. . . . an auspicious debut” and recommend it to both adult and precocious young adult readers.

The title character is a late Nineteenth Century Russian-Jewish teenager who immigrates to this country as a mail-order bride and joins her new husband as a pioneer homesteader on the Great Plains. Ms. Solomon based the story on the memoirs of at least two Nineteenth Century Jewish women pioneers in the American west, but the plot and characters are the product of her imagination.

For a more contemporary story of a Russian-Jewish mail-order bride try Anya Ulinich's 2007 novel Petropolis.

For more info: David Cooper