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THE WAR OF THE ROSENS, which has garnered critical acclaim, has been nominated for the prestigious Sophie Brody Medal, an award for the most distinguished contribution to Jewish Literature for Adults.
THE WAR OF THE ROSENS explores the timeless world of childhood—raw pain, bitter injustice, dark humor, achingly brilliant flashes of insight—and the journey toward the "promised" land of adulthood. Ten-year-old Emma, a budding poet, determinedly seeks answers to questions about the nature of good and evil, the existence of God and the meaning of religion. She tries to come to terms with her socialist/communist, culturally Jewish, atheist family, while secretly visiting the local Catholic church and praying to the Virgin Mary. Emma is in all of us. She,s the conscious voice within that seeks the answers to life and wonders if anyone is listening. Her exploration of faith and religion is universal. In THE WAR OF THE ROSENS Emma gives voice to the questions that everyone faces at some point, as she grapples with the meaning of spirituality.
Check out the Reader's Guide (PDF format). For more information and to buy the book, click here. To read an interview with Janice Eidus about THE WAR OF THE ROSENS, click here. Check out Sheila Bender's Writing Childhood's Dark Side on Writing It Real, which she wrote about THE WAR OF THE ROSENS. Praise... 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,0/00 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." —Donna Seaman, BOOKLIST 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. —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY The heroine of... The War of the Rosens... is a young poet of great imagination, who struggles with questions about her volatile family, the nature of God and why evil coexists with good. The novel is set in a Bronx housing project in the mid-1960s, and Eidus portrays the setting and era with grace and wit. —Sandee Brawarsky, JEWISH WOMEN I ... felt as if I were reading Isabel Allende ... for Jewish Girls! —Maya Escobar, visual artist ... Janice Eidus's The War of the Rosens ... succeeds in exploring belief without making fun of it. Eidus provides a glimpse into the equally disconcerting worlds of devout Judaism and passionate disbelief. —Melissa Korn, DOWNTOWN EXPRESS Janice Eidus' writing is intensely moving and fiercely intelligent. With bittersweet humor, and without sentimentality or nostalgia, she eloquently evokes the diverse voices of the adults and children of the colorful, eccentric Rosen family. She vividly captures not only the world of the Bronx in the mid-sixties, but also the world of one Jewish family struggling to survive in a harsh world charged with beauty and possibility. —Vivian Gornick, author of FIERCE ATTACHMENTS Janice Eidus is the new Jewish female John Steinbeck from the outer boroughs ..." —Marion Winik, NPR commentator & author of FIRST COMES LOVE Conflicting cultures lie at the heart of The War of the Rosens... With the open debates and bestselling books these days about atheism, this novel with its well-defined characters ultimately is about finding redemption in the cross currents of belief and disbelief. —Allan Caruba, editor, Bookviews.com 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, particularly since her parents forbid her to believe in any higher power. Eidus explores the timeless world of childhood—raw pain, bitter injustice, dark humor, achingly brilliant flashes of insight—and the elusive promised land of adulthood with clarity and grace. —Ruth Knafo Setton, author of THE ROAD TO FEZ THE WAR OF THE ROSENS, with exquisite language and a huge heart, introduces us to Emma, a budding poet seeking 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. 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 novel's title is delightful irony, as it becomes clear that this family is a metaphor and microcosm not only of the world's sorrows but also its joys. Set in the 1960s's, Janice Eidus has written a novel of redemption for our time here and now. —Sue William Silverman, author of BECAUSE I REMEMBER TERROR, FATHER, I REMEMBER YOU, winner of the Associated Writing Program's Award for Creative Nonfiction; editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction I've enjoyed THE WAR OF THE ROSENS the way I always loved Bernard Malamud: well-detailed, on point, characters you can see and touch. —David Unger, author of LIFE IN THE DAMN TROPICS: A NOVEL THE WAR OF THE ROSENS renders a troubled Jewish family living in the Bronx projects in the 1960s with the complexity, subtlety, and marvelously accurate recollected detail of Alice McDermott in her depiction of Long Island Catholic families. Emma Rosen and her older sister May come starkly alive and stay in memory. —Sharon Solwitz, author of BLOOD AND MILK: STORIES THE WAR OF THE ROSENS is fabulous. It brought me completely into the world of the Bronx and the Rosen family. I couldn't stop reading. It's a great story, so well told, moving completely and seamlessly from one point of view to another. —C.M. Mayo, winner of the FLANNERY O'CONNOR AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION; author of MIRACULOUS AIR: JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES THROUGH BAJA CALIFORNIA, THE OTHER MEXICO When I find a book that invites me in and won't let me go, I'm in heaven. The War of the Rosens did that. This is a beautiful, gripping read. I highly recommend it." —Victoria Moran, author of CREATING A CHARMED LIFE |
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