Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner #spirituality #women

Having been asked to volunteer my DNA to a group of researchers looking into Crohn's disease​, I was also happy to discover my ancestry which was quite interesting. I always thought of myself as German. With a name like Wertenberger you don't have much doubt. Except, while my family obviously lived in Germany and someone somewhere married a German, I am mostly Eastern European, Jewish, Native American and a dash of Irish. Oh, lest I forget, Neanderthal. Learning that information, I went back to the book, Jerusalem Maiden, for a more interesting read based on my ancestry. 

Esther Kaminsky is a product of her environment. In 1910 Jerusalem, women are taught that their mission in life is to birth Jewish children in order to hasten the arrival of the Messiah. As a member of an ultra-Orthodox sect, Esther learns young on how to be a Jewish Maiden. Work, struggle, grief, and death play an enormous part in the making of this young woman. She blames her mother's death and subsequently the maiming of her young son, directly to her love of art. Esther spends her life grappling with her urge to paint against her orthodox belief system.

Jerusalem Maidenm the novel, is in itself a work of art and research. Truthfully, I didn't expect to like this book, yet I found it to be a haunting portral of life, richly drawn by a very talented author.

The only fault I found is in the ending. Instead of finding peace, Esther compromises her talent by bowing before a fundamentalist doctrine. For this intelligent and curious woman who has already compromised her religious values through adultery and the abandonment of her children, I found it hard to believe that she would put aside a talent equal to a great master for a drab existence of unrelenting duty and drudgery.

About the Author

​Author Talia Carner's heart-wrenching suspense novels, PUPPET CHILD, CHINA DOLL, and JERUSALEM MAIDEN, were hailed for exposing society's ills. Her upcoming novel is HOTEL MOSCOW, (HarperCollins, June 2015) featuring an American woman who investigates business crime in Moscow, but gets caught in the 1993 parliament uprising against president Yeltsin, encounters anti-Semitism, and must come to terms with both her parents' Holocaust legacy and her own mistakes that might compromise her future. 

Carner's reviews of other authors' books can be found at http://tinyurl.com/o8uswq4 .

Her award-winning personal essays appeared in The New York Times, Chocolate For Women anthologies [Simon & Schuster], Cup of Comfort [Adams Media] and The Best Jewish Writing 2003 (John Wiley & Son). Her short stories were published in literary magazines such as Midstream, Lynx Eye, River Sedge, Moxie, Lilith, Rosebud, Confrontation and North Atlantic Review. JERUSALEM MAIDEN won the Forward National Literature Award in historical fiction category (Nov. 2011). 

Before turning to writing fiction full-time, Carner worked for Redbook magazine, was the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine, and founded a successful marketing consulting firm servicing Fortune 500 companies. She taught at Long Island University's School of Management and was a volunteer counselor and lecturer for the Small Business Administration. In 1993 she was sent twice by the United States Information Agency to Russia, and in 1995 participated in the NGO women's conference in Beijing.

Her addictions include chocolate, ballet, Sudoku--and social justice.