Novels
Novels
Street Corner Dreams
Financial disaster and the Jewish and Italian Mafia, threaten a family’s very existence in the turbulent years between the two World Wars.
How to Make a Life
Four generations of an immigrant family become Americanized as they conquer trauma, betrayal and loss with love, acceptance and hope.
Novels
In the crowded streets of Brooklyn where Jewish and Italian gangs demand protection money from local storekeepers and entice youngsters with the promise of wealth, Golda, Ben, and Morty thrive as a family. But in the Depression, Ben, facing financial ruin, makes a dangerous choice. Morty tries to save his father by getting help from a gangster friend but the situation only worsens. Forced to desert his family and the woman he loves in order to survive, Morty is desperate to go home. Street Corner Dreams is an exploration of a timeless question: how much do we owe the families that have sacrificed for and shaped us—and does that debt outweigh what we owe ourselves and our own hopes and dreams for a better life?
Street Corner Dreams
How to Make a Life
When Ida and her daughter Bessie flee a catastrophic pogrom in Ukraine for America in 1905, they believe their emigration will ensure that their children and grandchildren will be safe from harm. But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later, and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family. A sweeping saga that follows three generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world.
Florence Reiss Kraut
Florence Reiss Kraut is a native New Yorker, raised and educated in New York City. She holds a BA in English and a MSW in social work, and she worked for over thirty years as a family therapist before retiring to concentrate on her writing and travel widely.
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