The Better Nesting Book Club recommends:
The Boston Girl by
Anita Diamant
The book begins with Addie Baum’s twenty-two-year-old
granddaughter asking her to talk about how she got to be the woman she is
today. As her life story unfolds we learn that Addie was born in 1900 and was
the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland. She grew up in the North End and
is the Boston Girl.
As an eighty-five year old wife, mother, grandmother, social
worker, and teacher, Addie recalls living in a one-room tenement apartment with
her two sisters and their parents who had difficulty adapting to a new way of
life in their adoptive country. From joining a girls club at the neighborhood
settlement house as a teenager to falling in love and from marriage to going back to
college, she tells about her adventures with honesty and humor.
While Addie’s particular fictional story is unique, it
touches on subjects that are part of every woman’s and every family’s stories.
Family values, friendships, and the changing roles of women in the twentieth-century
are things that my own family has in common with this character.
As I read this book I couldn't help but think of my own
grandmothers and their stories. This is the kind of story that will inspire you
to ask your own family members about their stories.
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