PLACES WE LEFT BEHIND: A MEMOIR-IN-MINIATURE
Vine Leaves Press, September 5, 2023
What happens when two people love each other and still cannot agree on where home is?
Jennifer meets Philippe in Israel in 1989 during the First Intifada. He is an observant French immigrant who made aliyah; she is a secular American tourist who promised her mother she won’t fall in love and stay. They marry anyway. For the next twenty years, they move their family between Israel, France, and America, each one longing for a singular place to call home, neither one willing to let the marriage go.
In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines.
For the continuation of Jennifer and Philippe’s story, read Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses.
Available on Vine Leaves Press store, Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and more
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AWARDS
- Finalist for Memoir, American Writing Awards 2024
- Finalist for Autobiography/Memoir, Foreword Reviews Book Awards 2023
- Finalist for Women’s Literature Nonfiction, Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2024
- Finalist for Adult Nonfiction and book cover design, Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2023
- Finalist in Multicultural Nonfiction, American Legacy Book Awards 2024
- Finalist in Multicultural Nonfiction, American Book Fest’s 20th Annual Best Book Awards 2023
- Finalist in Multicultural Nonfiction, Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards 2023
- Pushcart Prize nomination for “Hand in hand,” Vine Leaves Press 2023
- Gold Book Award Winner, Literary Titan 2023
When you live a restless, writerly life, as Lang does, moving here, immigrating there (America, France, Israel), you need to discover, or invent, a literary structure as sophisticated and beautifully complicated as the life it replicates. Each facet in this collection is its own world-in-miniature that ultimately coheres into a compelling whole.
A powerful memoir that delves into the complexities of love, loss, and self-discovery. Lang examines the intricacies of marriage and compromise with poetic grace and raw honesty. For anyone who has ever loved deeply and been willing to take risks for the sake of love.
