CRS Book Club: The Boston Girl: A Novel by Anita Diamant
Thursday, November 7, 2024 • 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
The Boston Girl: A Novel by Anita Diamant
The Boston Girl is told through the eyes of Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. It is a coming-of-age story about family ties and values, about immigration and generational change, about friendship and feminism.
Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for the effect that America would have on three daughters. Growing up in the North End –at the time a teeming multicultural neighborhood—Addie’s intelligence and curiosity lead her to a world her parents can’t imagine, a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.
Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her “How did you get to be the woman you are today.” She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was.
She remembers staying at Rockport Lodge, a sort of “fresh air fund” resort located in a seaside town north of Boston, where she makes friends, who are part of a life that spans World War I, the influenza epidemic, and the Great Depression.
The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a how a generation of women found their place in a changing world.
CRS Book Club gathers on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 PM to discuss books (fiction and non-fiction, plays, and poetry) written by Jewish authors or that have a Jewish theme. See a book that interests you? Read it and join us for the discussion! Learn more about CRS Book Club here.
The Boston Girl: A Novel by Anita Diamant
The Boston Girl is told through the eyes of Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. It is a coming-of-age story about family ties and values, about immigration and generational change, about friendship and feminism.
Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for the effect that America would have on three daughters. Growing up in the North End –at the time a teeming multicultural neighborhood—Addie’s intelligence and curiosity lead her to a world her parents can’t imagine, a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.
Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her “How did you get to be the woman you are today.” She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was.
She remembers staying at Rockport Lodge, a sort of “fresh air fund” resort located in a seaside town north of Boston, where she makes friends, who are part of a life that spans World War I, the influenza epidemic, and the Great Depression.
The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a how a generation of women found their place in a changing world.
CRS Book Club gathers on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 PM to discuss books (fiction and non-fiction, plays, and poetry) written by Jewish authors or that have a Jewish theme. See a book that interests you? Read it and join us for the discussion! Learn more about CRS Book Club here.
