The Jester's Bells

About the Book

Events jolting and stirring, historic and whimsical, come to life thick and fast in The Jester's Bells. Filled with irony, satire, and caricature, it is the story of Carol Enid Abraham, a Depression Baby, growing up in Brooklyn during the lean, war-torn 1940s and the A-bomb scare of the 1950s. It reflects the pendulous swing of morals and ethics, gender and racial advances, radical religious thinking, inspired silliness and profound creativity that shaped her life, leaving permanent yet invisible scars.

Her high school yearbook named her "The Golden Girl." Her mother, a woman prone to citing clichés, says with Jewish irony, "All that glitters isn’t gold." Through her search for roots and identity in an ever-changing world, Carol views her daughter’s upcoming wedding as another of life’s ironies. The preparations become the binding thread, like the colorful ones her grandmother used in her embroidery. Through those threads, she rethinks her life and her family’s destiny, and discovers that her own truest destiny lies within herself. Before the world can be perfected, her own progeny must be secured.

Live in the atmosphere of this vibrant, hard-charging century as her family comes full circle from its origin in the shtetls of Europe to an American generation of assimilation.

About the Author

Carol Abraham is an alumna of the University of Miami. She has three daughters, and lives with her husband in Boca Raton, Florida.