Scott Nadelson

Aug 25, 2023 | oregonhumanities.org | Shane Burley |Scott Nadelson

Ahavah traced her finger along a line on a map of Ukraine. “On the coast here, along the Black Sea, is where my family is from,” she said. “Yours came from the north, in what’s now Belarus.” My wife had been poring over our family records, and now we were comparing the results of our DNA tests. Our collage of birth records and obituaries now had connective tissue, a tenuous claim to genetic ancestry. Her history goes back to the Black Sea Germans; mine to upper Ukraine.

May 2, 2023 | publishersweekly.com | Henry Bean |Hannah Rothschild |Scott Nadelson |Nishanth Injam

Screenwriter Bean’s marvelous novel, first published in 1982 as False Match, is about a nenoquich—the ancient Mexican word for a lifelong loser, born under a bad sign. It’s 1970, and wannabe writer Harold Raab, 26, is on the skids. He begs Penthouse magazine to give him an assignment, hangs out with his Berkeley, Calif., crew of fellow bohemians, and fills a notebook with their aimless adventures. His life acquires meaning when he meets the married Charlotte Cobin.