Goldreich

Michelle Tedford

Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

Gloria Goldreich’s elegant characters and storytelling have earned her readers around the country, as well as an invitation to this year’s Dayton Jewish Book Fair.

She will speak on Thursday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Hillel Academy. Admission is $10 per person and her books will be available for purchase at both sites of the book fair: Hillel Academy and the Boonshoft CJCE in Centerville.

Jodi Green, cultural arts director of the Dayton Jewish Community Center, said the Book Fair Committee chose Goldreich as the featured author because her newest book, Walking Home, appeals to the “sandwich” generation who are caring for aging parents.

Released in January by MIRA Books, Walking Home features Rochelle Weiss, a successful Manhattan public relations executive who returns home to care for her dying parents, survivors of the Holocaust who have lavished love on their only child. Strapped for cash, Rochelle takes over her friend’s dog-walking route and finds it therapeutic in piecing her life together.

Goldreich said the idea for the book came in the merging of two stories. In one, a family friend mentioned how, after the death of her Holocaust surviving parents, she could finally live her own life. In the second, a successful woman was surprised to find how much she enjoyed her employment transition from media to dog walking.

Goldreich’s next novel, Dinner with Anna Karenina (MIRA Books), will be released in January 2006. It revolves around a women’s book club and the relationships that develop among the characters.

The author said she never studied writing formally. Instead, she draws on her degrees in European and Jewish history in the research for her historical novels, which include West to Eden.

“Writing ability comes from reading,” she said. “I read anything that’s in print, from true romance magazines to the great classics.”

Her current reading list includes A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz and modern Israeli fiction. As an author, she is interested in how current events affect a writer’s subject and voice.

Goldreich published her first short story, The Season Between, in Seventeen magazine while a student at Brandeis University.

“I saw myself as becoming a writer, not necessarily a novelist,” she said. “I knew I would write.”

In addition to modern and historical novels, Goldreich has written books for younger audiences. She wrote the What Can She Be? line of books, which in the 1970s introduced girls to women in a variety of professions “beyond teachers or social workers or brides,” she said. She also wrote Ten Traditional Jewish Children’s Stories and edited the prize-winning anthology A Treasury of Jewish Literature.

Goldreich, who lives in Westchester County, N.Y., said she finds the variety in her writing exciting.

“I like being able to switch voices, from a dense adult novel to working on essays for small children,” she said.

Book tours have taken her to every major city and many minor ones during her decades-long writing career. The mother of three and grandmother of six consistently enjoys the opportunity to pamper herself with hotel luxury: clean sheets, quiet rooms, the complementary bubble bath. Touring also is a time to connect with her audience, one of the greatest thrills for an author.

“It’s the best, to meet people who are reading, who care, who understand your work,” she said.

© 2005 The Dayton Jewish Observer