Vine Leaves Press – förlag

Three gripping and emotional historical novels by Ann S. Epstein, about love, loss, and secrets across America, Italy, and Canada.

On the Shore follows the upheaval in an immigrant Jewish family when, without telling his family, 16-year-old Shmuel Levinson (a.k.a. Sam Lord) strives to prove his manhood, and escape his father''s pressure that he become a rabbi, by enlisting in the Navy.

In Tazia and Gemma, a pregnant seventeen-year-old Italian immigrant and survivor of the Triangle Waist Company fire, flees New York, leaving her married lover to think she miscarried the baby he urged her to abort.

In The Great Stork Derby an ambitious Emm Benbow convinces his wife, Izora, to enter the Great Stork Derby, a contest which offers a sizable cash award to the woman who has the most babies between 1926 and 1936. But soon his ambition turns into a ruthless obsession and addiction, and despite Izora''s efforts, he is disappointed by his large family, and alienates himself from children.

All profound and delightful reads, these novels are a poignant look at the strained relationships that trouble the multi-generation families of today as well as yesteryear. Highly charged with serious issues, plus the humor essential to confront them, you will turn the last pages with a smile.

Sixteen-year-old honors student Ernest Benoit has always followed the rules. But when his best friend drowns on Cape Cod, he begins to question his family''s devout Catholicism, and he disrupts an Advent prayer service at his Catholic high school. Now his life will never be the same.

A blizzard leaves Ernest stranded in a depressed western Massachusetts mill town after he boards a bus to Manhattan to avoid being sent to a Jesuit boarding school. It''s the beginning of a months-long journey that leads him to rescue a young girl from an icy river, into the bed of a lonely middle-aged widow, and to the woodland cabin of Roland Laliberté, a recluse who can shoot with the accuracy of a sniper.

When the widow falsely accuses Ernest of rape, Roland smuggles him over the Canadian border where they settle into life on the New Brunswick farm where Roland grew up. Ernest takes a job in the Lalibertés'' sawmill, and falls in love with the girl next door. But it''s not long before the local police start asking questions and his return home seems impossible.