Odessa, Odessa, Barbara Artson
Odessa, Odessa, Barbara Artson
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Odessa, Odessa
A Novel

Author: Barbara Artson

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 8 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/17/2020


Synopsis

Odessa, Odessa follows the families of two sons from a proud lineage of rabbis and cantors in a shtetl near Odessa in western Russia.

It begins as Henya, wife of Rabbi Mendel Kolopsky, considers an unexpected pregnancy and the hardships ahead for the children she already has. Soon after the child is born, Cossacks ransack the Kolopskys's home, severely beating Mendel. In the aftermath, he tells Henya that, contrary to his brother Shimshon's belief that socialism is their ticket to escaping the region's brutal anti-Semitic pogroms, he still believes America holds the answer. Henya, meanwhile, understands that any future will be perilous: she now knows their baby daughter, who has slept through this night of melee, is surely deaf.

So begins a beautifully told story that unfolds over decades of the twentieth century—a story in which two families, joined in tradition and parted during persecution, will remain bound by their fateful decision to leave Odessa.

About Barbara Artson

Barbara Artson is a retired psychoanalyst who calls San Francisco her home. She regularly contributes essays and reviews of films and books to professional journals. In addition to a PhD in psychology, she holds BA and MA degrees in English literature, and taught Shakespeare as a graduate student while also completing the unfinished Dickens novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, years before the musical production on Broadway. Like Dora in Odessa, Odessa, Artson's mother stitched elastic to the waistbands of women's bloomers.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on October 23, 2018

The story begins with a family of devout, Orthodox Jews in Odessa in the early 1900’s. A father and mother wanting to protect and provide for their family at a time when the Cossacks attack. “The screams and cries of terror, the stench of smoke and the burning of sacred books, the river of blood, th......more

I listened to Odessa, Odessa by Barbara Artson on audiobook. It was narrated extremely well by Christina Delaine. Odessa, Odessa was a very compelling family saga that followed the Kolopsky family from a Shetl near Odessa, Russia to an immigrant community in New York to New Jersey to California and......more

Goodreads review by Antoinette on July 29, 2018

Did your mother or grandmother ever tell you how your family came to live in this country, since we all come from somewhere else? Have you forgotten the details? Have no surviving member to tell the tale? Have no records to fall back on? Then hurry, order and read ‘Odessa, Odessa,’ and discover the......more

Goodreads review by Tina on November 15, 2018

I found this novel somewhat disappointing. I love reading Jewish historical fiction, but the writing style was “off”. Timelines were all over the place, and the chapter sequences were disorganized. The characters were interesting, but the author chose to insert historical facts in a way that made th......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on September 12, 2022

A wonderful tale of a Russian Jewish family's immigration and assimilation into American culture. Artson seamlessly weaves various story lines of the Kolopsky family back and forth in time to create a rich tapestry of historical detail and authentic dialogue that leaves the reader craving more.......more