"Safekeeping, Jessamyn Hope's luminous, irreverent, and ambitious first novel, shows how a single item - a medieval brooch made by a Jewish artisan for his wife - connects people across time and history. Full of romance, tragedy, betrayal, and the constant reminder that chaos is a driving force in everyone's story, Safekeeping is a wise and memorable debut by a novelist of great talent and originality." -Boston Globe
"It's a page-turner that satisfies all the cravings of escapist reading while meeting the real world head-on." -Montreal Gazette
A dazzling debut novel about love, loss, and the courage it takes to keep starting over.
It's 1994 and Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at Kibbutz Sadot Hadar with a medieval sapphire brooch. To redress a past crime, he must give the priceless family heirloom to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz fifty years earlier. But first, he has to track this mystery woman down - a task that proves more complicated than expected.
On the kibbutz Adam joins other lost souls trying to turn their lives around: Ulya, the ambitious and beautiful Soviet émigrée; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir, the Israeli teenager wounded in a bus bombing; Eyal, the disillusioned kibbutz secretary; and Ziva, the old Socialist Zionist firebrand who founded the kibbutz. Driven together by the confines of the commune, by love and hate, by their irreconcilable dreams and a shared sense of insecurity, their fates become forever entangled as they each get one last shot at redemption.
In the middle of that fateful summer glows the magnificent brooch with its perilous history spanning three continents and seven centuries. With insight and beauty, Safekeeping tackles that most human of questions: How can we expect to find meaning and happiness when we know that nothing lasts?
About the Author :
Jessamyn Hope is an award-winning writer of fiction and memoir. Her debut novel Safekeeping was a Boston Globe recommended read; acclaimed by The Globe and Mail; a New York Public Library Staff Pick; a National Jewish Book Club pick; winner of the J.I. Segal Award; and a finalist for the Ribalow Prize and the Paterson Fiction Prize. Safekeeping can also be found at number two on BuzzFeed's "53 Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down."Her short memoirs and stories - originally published in Ploughshares, The Common, and other magazines - have received two Pushcart Prize honorable mentions, been named a Best American Notable Essay, and have been anthologized in Best Canadian Essays and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Originally from Montreal, Hope currently splits her time between New York City and Tel Aviv. Learn more at jessamynhope.com.
Review :
"Safekeeping, Jessamyn Hope's luminous, irreverent, and ambitious first novel, shows how a single item...connects people across time and history. Full of romance, tragedy, betrayal, and the constant reminder that chaos is a driving force in everyone's story, Safekeeping is a wise and memorable debut by a novelist of great talent and originality." - Boston Globe
"Hope artfully pulls these storylines together in a book that is greater than the sum of its parts. A complex, beautiful story about the inheritance of Jewish history." - Globe and Mail
"One of the most assured debut novels in years, the book takes on a lot of challenges - structural, temporal and thematic - and meets them one by one. It's a page-turner that satisfies all the cravings of escapist reading while meeting the real world head-on." - Montreal Gazette
"This beautiful story of loss and hope sweeps artfully through 600 years of Jewish resilience. With its richly drawn, believable characters and its great sensitivity, Hope's novel is a striking debut." - Booklist
"When a debut novel comes along and dares just enough and hits the right notes, it deserves our attention." - Tablet
"gorgeous debut.... This is an excellent emotional rollercoaster ride." - Book Riot
"The characters were compelling and believable, and the story original and moving." - Fairlady Magazine
"a pleasurable and engulfing read" - Jerusalem Post
"This emotional journey will leave readers with aching hearts and deepened empathy for the waifs and strays of our world." - Shelf Awareness (starred review)
Winner of the J.I. Segal Award
Finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize
Finalist for the Ribalow Prize
Included on BuzzFeed Books' "53 Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down"
