Kantika — Elizabeth Graver

A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family's displacement across four countries, Kantika -- “song” in Ladino -- follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way -- a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge -- her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.

Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body -- in work, art and love -- serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one's one and only life.