“It was finally decided that Yankel Lewinkopf, the baker’s apprentice (who it happens was an orphan whom nobody would miss), should get on a horse and travel in the direction of Smolskie. Upon his arrival, he should find whatever official he could from the district and relate the whole case. As far as the elders of Kreskol were concerned, this might be too important not to get the gentile authorities involved.”
Elizabeth McCulloch was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lived in New England, the Midwest, Canada, and the South, before putting down roots in Gainesville, Florida, almost forty years ago.
“Esther has come to London because her mother is dying, her death a matter of time – of weeks or months—not luck. Her mother is eighty-three and has lived her life, Esther knows, but still the word dying drops inside her like a stone. Since she was last in London, Esther has lost her son, quit her job, left her husband. The world has changed. One by one, the moorings have been cut free.”
Sharon Solwitz‘s novel, Once, in Lourdes (Spiegel & Grau, 2017), is the story of four close friends in the fictional town of Lourdes, Michigan, who decide, during the summer before their senior year of high school, to make a suicide pact.