The War of the Rosens [Paperback]

Janice Eidus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2007

The War of the Rosens is as fierce, unflinching and tender as its feisty ten year-old heroine, Emma Rosen. Growing up in the mid-60's in the Bronx, Emma carries the weight of the world and the fate of her volatile, unpredictable family on her small shoulders. Emma, a budding poet seeks answers to questions about the nature of good and evil while struggling with an alternately brutal and loving father, a meek and "lost" mother, and a spiteful older sister.

While the Rosens ricochet off life's hard knocks, 13-year-old May, Emma's sister, keeps her physical symptoms a secret because of her fear of doctors. When tragedy strikes the family, it is Emma, with a tenacious spirit and an indomitable imagination who, through the power of love and the force of the written word, instigates her family's salvation.

The Rosens are dreamers. They are all trying to change things, to map their own dreams of a world in which the meanings of 'Faith' and 'Love' will one day be fully understood and realized, to create some possibility of a future, which becomes the most essential dream of all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Eidus's confident fifth book, it's 1965, and 10-year-old cutie-pie Emma Rosen is navigating the rough seas of preadolescence and her temperamental Jewish family in a lower-middle-income Bronx housing project. Her often violent father, Leo, a self-righteous atheist who craves attention, dreamed of being a great novelist but instead owns a candy store; his casual flirtation with a sultry Jamaican widow threatens to blossom into a full-blown affair. Annette, Emma's migraine-plagued doormat of a mother, can barely remember her younger, prettier, idealistic self as she slaves away in the kitchen, the butt of Leo's tantrums. Emma, a budding poet who prays to the Virgin Mary, inspires intense animosity in her 13-year-old sister, May, which burns with the same red-hot intensity as May's infatuation for a classmate with princely blond good looks and manners very different from the Rosens. An old-fashioned coming-of-age tale, the book soon grows dark with crisis. Eidus (Faithful Rebecca) illuminates the inner lives of young girls on the cusp of womanhood and demonstrates abundant compassion for her often prickly characters. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Eidus is a camouflage artist. Her sparkling novel Urban Bliss (1994) has a dark underside, while beams of light struggle to break through the gray pall over this complex coming-of-age novel. It's 1965, and the unhappy Rosens live in the projects in the Bronx along with a diverse array of other Jewish families. Hot-tempered Leo, who runs a humble candy store, is a rabid atheist who tries to inoculate his two daughters against religion. His meek wife, a migraine-prone drudge with a "predilection for Doom and Gloom," tows the line, but May, 13 and burdened with a lazy eye, regularly beseeches God and longs for glamour and romance. Precocious 10-year-old Emma is a budding poet drawn to the Virgin Mary and deeply concerned about what it means to be a bad or good Jew. As the Rosens are cruelly tested, Eidus works out a calculus of guilt, fear, and love. Grim and incisive, caustically humorous, and affecting, Eidus' drama of moral reckoning is rendered with barbed detail to yield what Leo calls "The Truth With a Capitol T." Seaman, Donna

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Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Behler Publications (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933016388
• ISBN-13: 978-1933016382
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,793,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable story about a contemporary secular Jewish family struggling to define itself, July 17, 2007

By 

Peter H. Schweitzer (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The War of the Rosens (Paperback)

The story is about Emma Rosen, 10-years old, and her growing up amidst a tumultuous Jewish family in a Bronx housing project, in 1965. Besides capturing the period and the drama with pitch-perfect accuracy, wit and humor, the book is noteworthy for its examination of themes of non-belief and figuring out how to be a "good Jew" despite a lack of belief, and how to cope with tragedy without this belief to fall back on. This challenge, of course, is not uniquely Jewish. Emma's father, Leo, a self-described "politically progressive Jewish atheist", is a dogmatic, volatile man who will trouble readers on account of his temperament, but his philosophical views are especially timely in this age of so-called "New Atheism."

The book is a breakthrough in another way. Unlike the earlier generation of Jewish novels, whose protagonists were immigrants and their children - e.g. Call It Sleep - this story is about the next generation - the second-generation Americans, like Emma's parents, scarred by the tragedies of their upbringing, the deprivations of their own parents' limitations, and, in this case, the disappointments of failed Communism. Since readers have the benefit of hindsight, we also can't help but feel especially sympathetic to Annette, Emma's mother, who was born just a bit too early and doesn't yet have the benefits of a new feminism to awaken her own independence and freedom.

This is a marvelous book, with appeal to Jews and non-Jews alike. Enjoy!

Rabbi Peter Schweitzer
The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism
New York City

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time well spent, July 18, 2007

By 

Marilyn Jaye Lewis (Easton, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The War of the Rosens (Paperback)

Reading this book was an absolute pleasure. Not that the subject matter is easy to feel good about, it's simply that Janice's characters are so real and so likable, even amid all their sometimes tragic flaws, I could not wait to find out what happened to them. This is a beautiful book about growing up in the violent, often spiritually impoverished New York of 1965. The domestic violence is so clearly depicted that it can be harrowing to read about, yet the underlying innocence of the characters and the love that informs and motivates them, will give you a lot of hope. This is not a story you will soon forget.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars War of the Rosens is wonderful!, September 21, 2007

By 

Beth Williamson "Queen of the Book Worms" (Huntsville TX USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The War of the Rosens (Paperback)

This is a novel about the relationships among and between a mother and father and two daughters. The narrator reveals her family; her father whose politics put him at odds with the rest of the neighbors, her mother who works hard to care for husband and daughters, and her sister with whom she has tremendous sibling rivalry.

In one incident, the ten-year-old narrator sneaks into a Catholic church and has a conversation with the Virgin Mary. She dips her hand into the holy water font and fears that she has baptized herself.

I have met the writer and plan to read her other books.