The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn — Merrill Joan Gerber

In The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn, Merrill Joan Gerber, so often applauded for her pure and natural prose, illuminates the sorrows and triumphs of three generations of sisters from an American Jewish family. Rachel and Rose, who come to America from Poland, discover their fates in New York's Lower East Side, where the streets are paved with gold. Rachel's daughters, Ava, Musetta, and Gilda, live the passionate drama of their family's destiny while the world fights two wars. In war and peace the men they love, their husbands and sons, bring them both ecstasy and bitter grief. Musetta's daughters, Issa and Iris, bring the story to its poignant close at the end of World War II. loves, and struggles of women who try to adapt the Jewish rituals of the old country to the requirements of the new world. Ava marries young to escape the wrath of her stepfather, while his favorite daughters, Musetta and Gilda, begin a battle of wills that will last a lifetime. Musetta, beautiful but troubled by jealousies and anger, taunts shy and delicate Gilda, who is anguished that the man destined to marry her falls in love with her sister. In this epic tale, Gerber's unerring pen explores, with forthrightness and compassion, a mosaic of family life in all its entanglements, revelations, and victories.