by Judith Frank
Their own wedding would be a tiny one at home, a few weeks, or maybe a month from now. They were still debating whether to have a justice of the peace or a rabbi preside. For Daniel, the main appeal of a Jewish wedding was the chance to break the glass at the end, to symbolize the shattering of their lives when Joel and Ilana died, and the continued shattering of Palestinian lives. But he was still trying to figure out whether he’d be satisfied with the one Jewish custom at the end of a secular service. They were also still thinking about whether to invite Malka and Yaakov, along with their parents and their best friends. Or whether to invite anybody but the kids and Yo-yo. They were trying to have a wedding and dodge the idea of a wedding.
“Here we go,” Daniel murmured, his lips grazing Matt’s ear. He laid his forefinger on the signature line, and signed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOR VARIOUS FORMS of vital and enlivening support, I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Dean of Faculty’s office at Amherst College. Warm thanks to Ellen Geiger and David Highfill for their faith in the book, and for shepherding it through multiple revisions, each better than the last.
In Jerusalem, the David family—Paula, Uri, Maya, and Tamar—took loving care of me during my research trips, accompanying me to the sites of café bombings, watching sad documentaries with me, introducing me to various professionals, cooking delicious food. Gila Parizian and Ruth Matot talked with me about the various aspects of the work social workers do when there is a terrorist attack in Jerusalem; I thank them for their generosity with their time, and for their emotional energy.
Anston Bosman, Edmund Campos, Stephanie Grant, and the Sánchez-Eppler family made crucial interventions in the novel at various points, and I thank them and my colleagues in the English Department at Amherst College for their enthusiastic and challenging engagement with it. Alexander Chee, Amity Gaige, Daniel Hall, Amelie Hastie, Catherine Newman, Andrew Parker, Paul Statt, Susan Stinson, and Elizabeth Young provided encouragement, advice, and support; I cherish their collegiality and friendship. Amy Kaplan’s friendship is one of my greatest pleasures, and her thoughtfulness and erudition about Israel/Palestine made her an essential interlocutor.
Elizabeth Garland is my first and last reader. I thank her for the rigor and conviction with which she approaches my work and for buoying me, always, with her outsized faith in my abilities. Abigail and Claire were born when I was midway through writing; they slowed the process down, but they also provided loads of new material, which is, of course, what having children is all about. I love them all dearly.
This book is dedicated to my mother, brother, and sister. We moved to Israel in 1976, and the consequences of that move continue to reverberate in our lives even though three of us have been back in the U.S. for decades. Thank you, Tony and Paula, for being my companions through our Israeli experiment and its aftermath, for the openness and humanity of your political views, for your equanimity about my plundering aspects of our lives for fiction, and for your love.
My mother died while this book was in proofs. She had already read it several times; it was on a topic dear to her heart, as her relation to Israel/Palestine had undergone a sea change late in her life. She read my work with wonder and appreciation. I love you, Mom, and I’ll miss you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JUDITH FRANK is a professor of English at Amherst College. She received a B.A. from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in English literature and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Cornell. She was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, has held residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell, and is the author of a previous novel, Crybaby Butch. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and two children.
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ALSO BY JUDITH FRANK
Crybaby Butch
CREDITS
Jacket design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Jacket photograph by Michelle Anderson/Trevillion Images
Author photograph by Samuel Masinter
COPYRIGHT
Sages and Dreamers: Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Portraits and Legends by Elie Wiesel. Copyright © 1991 by Elirion Associates, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author.
Lyrics from “Hofim Hem Lifamim” reprinted with permission from the estate of Nathan Yonathan.
“They All Laughed.” Music and Lyrics by GEORGE GERSHWIN and IRA GERSHWIN. © 1936 (Renewed) GEORGE GERSHWIN MUSIC and IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC. All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.
“ONE MAN GUY.” Words and Music by LOUDON WAINWRIGHT. © 1984 SNOWDEN MUSIC, INC. All Rights Administered by DOWNTOWN DLJ SONGS/DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.
“No More Drama.” Words and Music by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin. © 2001 EMI APRIL MUSIC INC., FLYTE TYME TUNES INC. and SCREEN GEMS-EMI MUSIC INC. All Rights for FLYTE TYME TUNES INC. Controlled and Administered by EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved International Copyright Secured Used by Permission—contains elements of “The Young and the Restless.” Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALL I LOVE AND KNOW. Copyright © 2014 by Judith Frank. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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ISBN 978-0-06-230287-8
EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN 9780062302885
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