Her most recent book, The Yiddish Gangster’s Daughter, is about a woman whose life is endangered when she discovers her father was a member of the Jewish mafia. It was one of three 2011 Claymore Award finalists and an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award quarter-finalist. Her first book, Still Missing Beulah: Stories of Jews and Blacks in Mid-Century Miami, explores the racism and anti-Semitism that tarnished Miami’s past and informed the relationship between the two minority groups. Three of the short stories in that collection have won literary awards. When she’s not working on a novel, Joan is testing recipes and writing food columns and articles, playing classical and Irish violin, reading, sailing, and bicycling. She lives in Boca Raton with her husband and ungrateful cat.