“How to Make a Life: A Novel by Florence Reiss Kraut is a beautifully written historical novel that explores family themes and the challenges of emigration. It starts with the migration of Ida and her daughter, Bessie, from Ukraine to America in 1905. They believe they are moving to greener pastures, leaving behind a painful situation. Readers are introduced to the family line as it grows, but it experiences turmoil and challenges that they never expected. Bessie’s children have to deal with the mental illness of her daughter, Ruby. Jenny develops a love affair with her brother-in-law, and Ruby’s daughter runs off. The family also experiences death. Can this family heal and find unity amidst the vicissitudes that life throws at them?

Florence Reiss Kraut’s novel is a saga that follows a family through many decades as they struggle with different challenges. The international setting is well-written and at one point, I found myself asking the question: Must we move somewhere else to find life, or do we create it where we are planted? The theme of emigration is skillfully handled and many emigrant readers will find strong resonances with the themes and the characters. The author writes about family and how new cultures affect family dynamics and she does so in a wonderful way. The prose is gorgeous, the narrative voice compelling and hugely observant. The relationships are well-handled and they feel real to readers. There are pathos, realism, and humanity infused in the writing and I found it easy to relate to the characters. How to Make a Life: A Novel is a spellbinding family saga with strong shades of history; it is engrossing and fast-paced.”

— Romuald Dzemo, Readers' Favorite,

'“A debut novel focuses on the complexities of Jewish family life.”

“Chaya Amdur is the mother of five children when a pogrom strikes her village in Kotovka, Ukraine. It’s 1905, and only Chaya and two daughters manage to survive the attack unscathed—infant Feige and 10-year-old Beilah. Chaya’s husband, three of her children, and her mother have all been murdered. Though invited to stay with her extended family, Chaya instead sets off for America. Once in New York, Chaya and her daughters need American names. Chaya becomes Ida; Beilah becomes Bessie; and Feige becomes Fanny. The girls start to learn English and settle in, with Bessie watching Fanny while Ida is at work. But tragedy continues to strike the family, and soon Fanny is dead, with Bessie to blame. Yet life goes on. Bessie thrives, marries, and has five children of her own, who grow up in the shadow of so much unspoken sorrow. Kraut’s novel deftly follows the family line down five generations of weddings and early deaths, births and feuds, and the potential for reconciliations. While narrated in the third person, the tale is somewhat polyphonic, as each chapter delivers a different character’s perspective. From the opening prologue, the author makes it clear this work will not pull any punches. In Ukraine, Ida sees the damage of the pogrom: ‘Beneath the piano a glimpse of her husband, Moshe, on his back, mouth gaping mid-scream, shirt and chest split, the white linen crusted with dark red.’ Examining the trials of Bessie and her family, the engrossing narrative begins to explore intergenerational suffering as well as mental illness through her firstborn daughter, Ruby. Kraut’s master’s in social work and former career as a family therapist are skillfully reflected in Ruby’s moving tale, in which the girl speaks for herself. The novel’s conclusion furthers the book’s themes of pain and grief.”

 “An engaging and heartfelt portrayal of intergenerational trauma and hope”

— Kirkus Reviews

“The world of richly drawn characters in How to Make a Life transported me on a compelling emotional journey. In a story that brings the 20th Century to life, the powerful need to assimilate threatens the very bonds that ground an immigrant family with a sense of identity as four generations adapt to a culture that reinvents itself with every decade.”

— Stephanie Lehmann, Author, Astor Place Vintage

“How to Make a Life grabs by the throat and heart from page one. It parallels the gut-wrenching horrors of war and mental illness, and the extraordinary and ordinary struggles and sacrifices family makes to survive. Our great grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-grandchildren, spouses, inlaws--family-- are the reasons we are who we are, for better, or worse, in sickness, and in health.”

— Patricia Dunn, author of Rebels by Accident and Senior Director of The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College,

“How to Make a Life is a novel about family itself—how to exist after unimaginable pain, acts of courage, secrets buried and revealed, that leave their glaring imprint on four generations of a Jewish family against the backdrop of history in the 20th century. Emotionally honest, rich, and deeply empathetic, this is a book for all of us nurtured in the tumult and soil of family”

— Marlena Maduro Baraf, Author, At the Narrow Waist of the World

"Florence Reiss Kraut has crafted a literary miracle. She took a century's worth of familial relationships and allowed the reader to enter into the emotional depths of her characters. Her experience as a family therapist is evident throughout the book, especially in her depiction of Ruby whose struggles with psychosis and the impact on family is as close a rendering of this particular challenge as any I have read - brilliant.”

— Jill Edelman Barberie, MSW, LCSW Author, This Crazy Quilt: Parenting Adult Special Needs One Day At A Time