I was born in a small town in central Wisconsin not far from where Gittel is set. 

Growing up, my favorite places were Herschleb’s Dairy Bar, the ice rink, the old railroad bridge that spanned the Wisconsin River, and most of all, the T.B. Scott Free Public Library, which was a short bike ride from my home...once I mastered my two-wheeler. (I clung to training wheels far longer than any of my friends. The shame was real!) 

That library was pure magic: Corinthian columns to welcome you in and a massive staircase with polished banisters that led to the best place in the world--the children’s room!  I can still remember where the Ramona books were shelved beneath a window seat with a view of the Wisconsin River. 

After high school I studied English and creative writing at Oberlin College and earned my MA in American Studies at Washington State University. My master’s thesis, a collection of poetry on community and identity in diaspora, included several poems about my great grandparents, who were members of a small Jewish agricultural colony in Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Years later, that colony and those poems were the inspiration for my debut novel, Gittel.

I’ve lived in five states since I graduated from high school—Ohio, California, Washington, Idaho, and Oklahoma—but the river, the people, and places in central Wisconsin are always with me, and when I pick up a pen, my stories inevitably circle back there. Gittel is one of those stories.  

I hope you'll fall in love with Gittel and her family, who are loosely based on three generations of my own family.