Description
A Good Morning America 2024 GMA Buzz Pick
Purchasing a historic Savannah home unlocks the sweeping story of a Southern Jewish family
As Jason K. Friedman renovated his flat in a grand townhouse in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, he discovered a portal to the past. The Cohens, part of a Sephardic community in London, arrived in South Carolina in the mid-1700s; became founding members of Charleston's Jewish congregation; and went on to build home, community, and success in Savannah.
In Liberty Street: A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War Friedman takes the reader on a personal journey to understand the history of the Cohens. At the center of the story is a sensitive young man pulled between love and duty, a close-knit family straining under moral and political conflicts, and a city coming into its own. Friedman draws on letters, diaries, and his experiences traveling from Georgia to Virginia, uncovering hidden histories and exploring the ways place and collective memory haunt the present. At a moment when the hard light of truth shines on gauzy Lost-Cause myths, Liberty Street is a timely work of historical sleuthing.
Product Details
| Publisher | University of South Carolina Press |
| Publish Date | April 30, 2024 |
| Pages | 288 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781643364698 |
| Dimensions | 8.7 X 5.8 X 0.9 inches | 0.8 pounds |
About the Author
Jason K. Friedman is the author of the award-winning story collection Fire Year. He lives in San Francisco and Savannah.
Reviews
Liberty Street's gifts are abundant. Friedman has developed a well-written history with original perspectives, often from the most unexpected of places.
-- "Rain Taxi"The insightful product of years of research.
-- "Savannah Morning News"Liberty Street is a notable addition to gay literature of the South.
--Donna Meredith "Southern Literary Review"Intricate and well wrought, like the iron balconies of old Savannah townhouses, Liberty Street is a welcome contribution to the literature on the varieties of Jewish experience in the nineteenth-century American South as well as proof of the benefits of attending carefully to the shadows the past casts on the present.
--Richard Kreitner "Jewish Review of Books"With a seamless blend between first-person narrative style and historical examination, Liberty Street proves that the past is both personal and intensely present.
--Hannah Bone "Southern Review of Books"[A]n engrossing and thoughtful investigation of a slave owning Jewish family in the American South, with all of its attendant contradictions, self-justifications, and cognitive dissonances.
--Lauren Gilbert "Jewish Book council"A revealing prism through which to examine a dark period of American history.
-- "Publishers Weekly"Earn by promoting books
