Tag Archives: 1960s movement

Author Readings in Berkeley, California, June 13 and 14

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This longtime Bay Area activist will be in Berkeley, California, to read and sign copies of my recent novel, The Rescuer’s Path, on June 13 and June 14. Be great to see you at either reading; both include Q&A–discussion and socializing time.

*June 13, 2013, 7-9 pm, I’m reading in the Aquarian Minyan Author Series, St. John’s Presbyterian Church (Fireside Room) (this is a benefit for the Minyan, small donation suggested but not required. Light refreshments included).

* June 14, 2013, 12:15-1:15pm, Berkeley City College (in the Atrium), Center St. between Milvia and Shattuck Ave. (free).

The Rescuer’s Path is the tale of a Holocaust survivor’s daughter who, in Nixon-era Washington DC, aids an Arab-American antiwar leader suspected by the FBI in a lethal truck-bombing. It is the story of their budding trust and friendship, and of  their tragic love. And it recounts the search of their birth daughter, thirty years later in the shadows of 9/11, for the truth of her origins.

Ursula K. Le Guin calls this novel “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Cheryl Strayed, acclaimed author of Wild, says “The Rescuer’s Path held me from the first page to the last.” Flannery O’Connor Award winner Carole L. Glickfeld says “I could not stop reading this novel–I love it.” Small Press Review says “The writing is lyrical and poetic, the characters vivid, and the story captivating.” Berkeley activist/songwriter Carol Denney says “This is the book you can’t put down, the people you will remember, the vibrant story we all share.”

And more: “These characters will break your heart and put it back together again,” notes Portland author Heather Sharfeddin. FirstMotherForum calls The Rescuer’s Path “a compelling tale with universal themes of separation and reconciliation.” It is a novel, notes Jewish Transcript (JT) News, “that asks us, How do we make peace, in ourselves and in the world?”

Come hear the reading, ask questions, and perhaps take home a signed copy of The Rescuer’s Path (2012, PVP, trade paperback $15.95).

Questions about the readings? Send as a comment here or visit me on facebook at Paula Friedman (same photo as author photo for this blog).

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Remembering November 3rd

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Very strangely, it was only after I got back in touch with an old boyfriend and friend from my pre-Jurassic college days that I learned, from one of his chance comments, that the “possibly correct” account my brother once told me of my cousin’s ex-husband’s death was true.

I was very moved by this, both because I do care for these persons, and because in a strange way the tale parallels part of the plot of my recent The Rescuer’s Path novel–the part about the murder of a radical activist.

You may have guessed by now, this being a November 3–the real event, the killing, to which I refer tonight is what is now known as the Greensboro Massacre, and my cousin had been, at the time, for some years divorced from the by-then remarried doctor who was one of two doctors shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan, that November 3, 1971, while organizing textile workers, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Why do I recount this now? Because this is our heritage. The Struggle is yours too, if you will join in it.

In these struggles, we have, so many, loved, lived, fought for justice and peace, felt empathy for one another; too many have died. La lutte continue, as we say, like so much else in life. Remember.

Finding oneself in the late-1960s antiwar movement

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With the Occupies and the growing third-party movements as elections near, this year, we are reminded of the days of hope, the time we call “the Sixties.” For many of us, this time was primarily, or crescendoed in, 1965 to 1969 or so. My essay “God’s Eyes,” originally published in 1994 in Viet Nam Generation under the title “You asked ‘What was happening then?'” received a Pushcart Prize nomination and, in 1996, honorable mention for the first New Millenium Writings nonfiction award. “God’s Eyes” is written as if speaking to my first child, given up for adoption and who had, as an adult in the early 1990s found me. “God’s Eyes” tells of discovering, through love, pregnancy, and a nonviolent demonstration in the antiwar movement, my self–my depths, and that I loved, and that we can each love and struggle for a more loving society.

“God’sEyes” tells us that we found, in those days of hope, ways to recognize the love in everyone, in self and others, and to reach through to this love to create a better society. We still can, really.

Find it here– http://www.highlightscommunications.com/gods_eyes_sample.htm

Small Press Review praises The Rescuer’s Path

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I’m happy to tell you that the prestigious and nationally distributed Small Press Review praises my new novel, The Rescuer’s Path, very glowingly–mostly–in the Jan.-Feb. 2012 issue. Here’s the review; enjoy!

Small Press Review—review by Marie C. Sanchez

The Rescuer’s Path

by Paula Friedman (2012; 195 pp; Pa; $15.95; Plain View Press)

From the first page, Friedman illuminates a world near Washington DC of gullies and game trails and Gavin Hareem, a Nixon-era wounded antiwar leader who is accused of the deadly bombing of an army truck. While Malca Bernovski rides a horse off-trail, she encounters the wounded half-Syrian fugitive and, by aiding him, sets off a blossoming romance that sends them both on a desperate struggle for survival and justice. The sheltered Malca, 16-year old daughter of a Holocaust survivor, reveals surprising resources and choices.

If you’ve ever wanted to enter the mind of a pacifist who eventually turns to violence, this is it. Gavin alternates between reality and insanity, clarity and confusion, brilliance and absurdity, striking just the right notes of believability.

Years later, the lovers’ child searches for her parents and the story moves seamlessly from the nation’s capital to the Colorado Rockies, from the Warsaw Ghetto to post-9/11 San Francisco.

Time itself appears among the major characters. Deft strokes unobtrusively fill in the couple’s histories without slowing the story, and elegant leaps propel the story forward years and decades. However, Friedman’s adroit touch fades toward the end where the treatment of time feels more like gaps than well-timed jumps.

The couple’s daughter searching out her birth parents in the last third of the book starts out promising, but at the end, seemed unfinished. The treatment of daughter and time at the end of the book seemed disappointingly lackluster, given such an incandescent beginning.

That said, the writing is lyrical and poetic, the places finely detailed, the characters vividly drawn and the story captivating.

—JanFeb 2012 SPR—