Beyond the Pale

Description: Winner of the Lambda Literary Award: "A page-turner that brings to life turn-of-the-century New York's Lower East Side." --Library Journal
Born in a Russian-Jewish settlement, Gutke Gurvich is a midwife who immigrates to New York's Lower East Side with her partner, a woman passing as a man. Their story crosses with that of Chava Meyer, a girl who was attended by Gutke at her birth and was later orphaned during the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Chava has come to America with the family of her cousin Rose, and the two girls begin working at fourteen. As they live through the oppression and tragedies of their time, Chava and Rose grow to become lovers--and search for a community they can truly call their own.

Set in Russia and New York during the early twentieth century and touching on the hallmarks of the Progressive Era--the Women's Trade Union League, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, anarchist and socialist movements, women's suffrage, anti-Semitism--Elana Dykewomon's Beyond the Pale is a richly detailed and moving story, offering a glimpse into a world that is often overlooked.

"A wonderful novel." --Sarah Waters

Brief description: Elana Dykewomon has published seven award-winning books foregrounding lesbian heroism, including the classics Riverfinger Women (1974), Beyond the Pale (1997), and Risk (2009). A former editor of the international lesbian feminist journal Sinister Wisdom, she is the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle's Ferro-Grumley Award. In 2009 she received the Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize, awarded by the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Dykewomon and her partner live in Oakland, California.

Review Quotes: "One of the most compelling novels I have ever read . . . a work of remarkable importance." --The Village Voice "Truly great novels aren't written very often, but Beyond the Pale deserves all the glowing adjectives available . . . filled with memorable scenes and glorious characters." --Bay Area Reporter "A wonderful novel . . . I wept like a fool for pages; these characters had become so strongly defined, I too felt like family." --Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art "Beyond the Pale is a remarkable and unforgettable chronicle told through wisdom, passion and clarity by one of our community's foremost storytellers." --Feminist Bookstore News "Sensuous, moving, inspiring: Beyond the Pale is a wonderful novel." --Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith