Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, and always compelling, the stories in this collection explore the many manifestations of being Jewish in a modern and largely secular world. Jennifer Anne Moses creates characters, mostly American, who are struggling with love, relationships, faith, tradition, and, most of all, family and the ties that bind.

A professor of Jewish literature buys a lake house in the Adirondacks with the aim of enjoying it with her husband, dogs, and grown sons, only to discover that her new neighbor is a sexist, dog-hating, and deeply antisemitic bully. The editor of a magazine devoted to lost languages resents the popularity of a younger, less sophisticated novelist, who happens to have been her student. A young woman tries to find her way after her fiancé calls off the wedding.

With the contradictions, yearnings, imperfections, and longing for grace that beset all of us, these characters reach their own epiphanies — with results that are by turns breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Jennifer Anne Moses is a writer and painter whose books include The Book of Joshua, Food and Whine, and Bagels and Grits. Her writing has appeared frequently in Time magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and elsewhere.

Moses will be in conversation with Susan Crawford, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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