Ann S. Epstein Writer

My Amazon and Goodreads review of From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family by June Cummins with Alexandra Dunietz (Rating 4) – A Testament to the Power of Children’s Literature. From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family by June Cummins with Alexandra Dunietz, is a thoroughly researched and insightful biography about children’s book author Sydney Taylor, née Sarah Brenner. Taylor, best known for her All-of-a-Kind Family series, was a pioneer, the first to present a Jewish American family — religious yet assimilated — as the main characters. Like Taylor’s books, which drew on her experiences growing up, Cummins’s biography is also a historical recap of immigrant life on the Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century, of particular interest to me because it portrays the place and time of my parents’ childhoods too. Further, the book reflects on how the evolution of children’s literature, and the publishing world in general, dictate what is acceptable (i.e., marketable) for authors to write. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I share Taylor’s wariness and resistance to such constraints. Her defense of her work’s authenticity and enduring values, which Cummins forcefully presents, is admirable and inspirational. Perhaps most appealing is the story of the lifelong closeness and entanglement of the five real-life Brenner sisters, and the support of Taylor’s husband, as uncommon in its era as her books. This comprehensive biography is a testament to the power of children’s literature to confirm identity, educate the young about diversity through engaging storytelling, and create new generations of enthusiastic readers.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Ever Rest: A Novel by Roz Morris (Rating 5) – Moving Past the Refrain of Loss. In Ever Rest, Roz Morris forges an unlikely alliance between rock climbing and rock music to create an absorbing novel about an outsized figure whose life shaped people’s identities and whose death leaves them hanging off a cliff, teetering over an emotional abyss, and grasping for an artistic foothold. Twenty years before the book opens, rock star Ash perished while he and his bandmate Hugo were climbing Mt. Everest. Ash’s body was never recovered, leaving his girlfriend Elza, Hugo, and another band member Robert, equally lost and bereft. Grief counselors use the term “ambiguous loss” to describe the absence of a loved one when there is no body to offer definitive proof they have died — they may have disappeared in a disaster, never come home from school, or not returned after running an errand. The book’s central question is whether recovering Ash’s body will allow those who revolved around him to move past the refrain of his death to compose new verses for their own lives. As a fiction writer myself who balances multiple points of view (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admired Morris’s deft blend of perspectives, which provide insight into those driven by their obsessions and the loved ones they in turn drive to anxiety and despair, exasperation and confusion. Her impeccable research into music-making music and mountaineering ground this soaring novel in both worlds. The memorable characters in Ever Rest will remain on readers’ playlists long after the book’s last peak is summited and its final note is sung.