Columbus: Amy Gottlieb on "The Beautiful Possible"

Event date: 
02/16/2016 - 7:00pm

Join us on Tuesday, February 16th at 7:00pm for the launch of Amy Gottlieb's The Beautiful Possible. Joining her in discussion for the event is Deborah Dash Moore.

Synopsis: Spanning seventy years and several continents, this enthralling novel tells the braided love story of three unforgettable characters. In 1946, Walter Westhaus, a German-Jewish refugee who spent the war years at Tagore's ashram in India, arrives at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where he meets Sol Kerem, a promising rabbinical student. A brilliant nonbeliever, Walter is the perfect foil for Sol's spiritual questions . . . and an alluring paramour for Sol's free-spirited fiancee, Rosalie. Months later they shatter their impossible bond, retreating to opposite sides of the country Walter to pursue an academic career in Berkeley, and Sol and Rosalie to lead a congregation in suburban New York. A chance meeting years later reconnects them catching three hearts and minds in a complex web of desire, heartbreak, and redemption. With extraordinary empathy and virtuosic skill, The Beautiful Possible considers the hidden boundaries of marriage and faith, and the mysterious ways we negotiate our desires.

Amy Gottlieb is a graduate of Clark University and the University of Chicago. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Lilith, Puerto del Sol, Other Voices, Storyscape, Zeek, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, and elsewhere. Her fiction was nominated for a GE Foundation Younger Writer’s Award and she is the recipient of a Literary Arts Fellowship and Residency from the Bronx Council on the Arts, and an Arts Fellowship from the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education/ Amy Gottlieb lives with her family in New York City. THE BEAUTIFUL POSSIBLE is her first novel. 

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. An historian of American Jews, she has published an acclaimed trilogy examining the years from 1920 to 1960, including the experience of Jewish soldiers in World War II. Her work regularly garners awards. Her most recent book, Urban Origins of American Judaism (2014), examines how new religious forms emerged on the streets of American cities and includes a chapter on photographs of American Jews.

Event address: 
450 Columbus Ave
New York, NY 10024