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Zelda Popkin

The Life and Times of an American Jewish Woman Writer

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Zelda Popkin's adventurous life could have made her the protagonist of one of her own novels. In his brilliant telling of the story of her life, her historian grandson, Jeremy D. Popkin, has made a singular contribution to the history of American Jewish women in the twentieth century.

From the 1920s when she worked in the highly competitive and male-dominated public relations business to her rise as a million selling author of popular fiction beginning in the 1940s, including some of the earliest fiction on the Holocaust and the state of Israel, Zelda's life and work documented the rise of American Jewish women. Popkin uses Zelda's experience to bring to life a larger story of American Jews and American women in the twentieth century, with the vividness that comes from having a lively character at its center. At the same time, this will also be a story about a woman whose powerful personality profoundly influenced several generations of a family. Popkin makes the case that even if she sometimes burnished her stories to create what he calls "legends of Zelda," she was one of the most articulate female members of the generation of Jews who fought their way into the American middle class during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s.

Zelda's life is a rich source of evidence about the experience of American Jewish women and offers perspectives that are frequently at odds with analyses based on men's lives. The story of Zelda, her generation, and its rich and significant legacy will create a compelling portrait and detailed tapestry of an iconic woman and her time.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 7, 2022
      In this ambitious mix of biography, historiography, and family memoir, historian Popkin (A New World Begins) pays tribute to his grandmother, novelist Zelda Popkin, née Feinberg. Born in Brooklyn in 1898, Zelda worked as a newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania before moving to New York City in 1916. She married Louis Popkin, her boss at the Jewish Welfare Board, in 1919, and the couple opened Planned Publicity Service, one of the earliest public relations firms. Zelda longed to be an author, however, and wrote freelance magazine pieces while raising two sons and placating her disapproving husband, who died suddenly in 1943. Popkin charts Zelda’s decades-long, up-and-down writing career, focusing on her struggle with whether to focus on Jewish themes or on more universal “American” ones. Two of her most popular works—the Mary Carner detective series and the novel The Journey Home (which sold a million copies in 1945 and 1946)—highlighted issues of working women, while the third, Herman Had Two Daughters, blended fiction with autobiography to spotlight generational conflict between Jewish immigrant parents and their American-born children. Throughout, Popkin draws insightful comparisons between Zelda and other Jewish American writers and provides helpful synopses of her novels. This admiring profile restores a well-deserving author to the spotlight. Illus.

    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2023

      Popkin (history, Univ. of Kentucky; A New World Begins) examines the life of his grandmother, novelist Zelda Feinberg Popkin. Born in 1898 in Brooklyn, Zelda attended Columbia University and became a reporter for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. Popkin demonstrates the ways in which Zelda moved in multiple milieus. The child of Jewish immigrants, who were part of an exodus from Eastern Europe, she distanced herself from customs and was among the first generation of women able to cast a ballot. After marrying her husband Louis Popkin, in 1919, they began a small public relations firm. Following Louis's sudden death in 1943, Zelda turned her attention to writing mysteries and novels. Popkin provides synopses and analyses of her work, the most successful of which was a novel titled The Journey Home, selling millions of copies in the late 1940s. Zelda endeavored to provide an alternative view of Jewish womanhood, a counterpoint to the "overbearing mother" stereotype. She also resisted Zionism, encouraging assimilation, but her own children rebelled against this ideology, embracing their Jewish heritage. VERDICT Popkin paints a discerning portrait of a complex matriarch, while adding nuance to the Jewish American experience in the 20th century. Recommended.--Barrie Olmstead

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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