num_pages: 406
description: Beyond the Pale — winner of the Lambda Literary Award — tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich’s odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York. Interwoven with her tale is that Chava Meyer, who was attended by Gurvich at her birth and grew up to survive the pogrom that took the lives of her parents. Throughout the book, historical background plays a large part: Jewish faith and traditions, the practice of midwifery, the horrific conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and New York sweatshops, and the determined work of labor unionists and suffragists.
language: English
title: Beyond the Pale
titlecomplete: Beyond the Pale
genres: Historical, Judaism, Queer, Feminism, Classics, LGBT, Historical Fiction, Jewish, Fiction, Lesbian
ratings_count: 1086
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Stonewall Book Award
category: Literature, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Ferro-Grumley Award
category: Lesbian Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Lesbian Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: The Publishing Triangle Award
category: The Ferro-Grumley Awards
publisher: Raincoast Books