Vera's Will

by Shelley Ettinger

LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEW:
It was Easter Monday, 1903, when five-year-old Vitka Resnikoff first experienced the evil spawned by ignorance and prejudice. The pogrom that tore through Kishinev, Russia, destroyed her Jewish neighborhood, the enraged mob burning, raping, and killing. Ten years later, what’s left of her family has immigrated to New Jersey. When orphaned cousin Mary moves in with the Resnikoffs (now Resnicks) and young Vitka (now Vera) falls in love for the first time, Vera faces a different sort of hatred. Decades later, another Mary comes along, Vera’s granddaughter, who shares more qualities than blood with her grandmother.

VERDICT: Longtime LGBTQ activist Ettinger has fashioned a powerful, superbly written saga that spans three generations and a century. The parallel stories of Vera and her granddaughter spotlight the challenges faced by women who love women, but there is an even wider focus here. Through her lifetime, Vera witnesses the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil rights era, the counterculture of the 1960s, the gay liberation movement, and more. This debut novel, in essence, presents the history of oppression and liberation in the 20th century told through the voices of two women, one hopelessly silenced, one forever speaking out. A breathtaking achievement.—Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY

A novel of tremendous insight, and tremendous import. ... Vera's Will is not only a deeply moving book, but a gift, and a kind of rescue.
Justin Torres, author of National Book Award winner Blackouts

Ettinger's captivating story is rich with social and cultural detail, alive with generously-drawn characters, and unflinching in its political passion.
Ellen Meeropol, author of On Hurricane Island

Vera's Will is a beautifully written family saga with a twist that tells the parallel stories of a woman and her granddaughter who are both lesbian. ... One is a story of self-sacrifice, the other is a story of liberation; the author's great gift is to show us how they intertwine.
Michael Nava, author of The City of Palaces

Genres: Fiction

420 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2015

About the author

Shelley Ettinger, originally from Detroit, lived in New York City for most of her adult life before relocating to San Antonio, Texas. She is a longtime activist in the LGBTQ movement and in anti-racist, anti-war and union struggles. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in many literary journals. Vera's Will is her first novel.

Reviews

[Marisol Cortez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Political fiction at its best--fantastic story, fantastic writing, and what a feat to weave together so many timelines and generations. Cried several times reading, for the grief of what Vera loses, again and again, and eventually feels compelled to deny herself. Not until the end did I feel the full weight of the title's double meaning: Vera's will as in her "insurmountable" resolve to self-deny no matter the cost, Vera's will as in what gets passed on, what Randy inherits in her own life to its fullest fruition. So many beautiful passages, as in the love scenes between Vera and Flo, in particular the street scene where Vera looks up and sees Flo illuminated up above in her apartment window: "For the world has gone quiet again. Quite a trick for Essex Street. Vera has become a spirit medium. A receptor for the silent communiqué Florence sends from above. It enters through her pores and she casts it upward in redoubled intensity. Back and forth between them as the day grows dim the message plays, a secret source of light that might be strong enough to stop the darkness about to fall." And Ettinger's commentary on the silences we pass down and inherit within families also hits hard: "For we had now cemented a pattern, already well in place, of sidestepping difficult issues. We both meant well. All those silences born of love."

[Miriam Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shelley Ettinger's novel centers more than a century of history by following Vera and her eastern European Jewish family as they escape the horrors of anti-semitic violence and make the harsh journey across the Atlantic to settle in New York City. The refugees find homes and jobs among other new immigrants in the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side garment industry, and the novel hits the great events of those times: the labor strikes, the Triangle Fire, the communities of political radicals, feminists and rebel artists. Vera comes to affirm her lesbian sexuality in hiding, fearing the consequences of discovery even as she maintains a quiet dignity. She holds onto her secrets, throughout the war years in Detroit and the 1950s Red Scare. As she ages, she comes to know her rebel grandchild who has found her way to lesbian liberation in mid-20th century Michigan. I loved this book for its strong political sensibilities and subtle narrations of family generations. The storytelling was dramatic and always confident and I delighted in the subtle respect given to lesbian romance within the broad histories of political movements.

[Ingrid Blaufarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please be warned that this review gives away the plot.
What a sad, sad story—for Vera, who is forced to give up her children, and for them, and especially the elder, Willy/Bill, who lives all his life with the pain of what he felt as her desertion. Such a powerful depiction of life in the closet, and Vera’s feeling that she must avoid love because of her “disease.” A life of loss and deprivation. Though not entirely. She does have relationships with other relatives. I ached for her. A testimony to the writing.

I thought the structure worked well. Randy’s first person narrative and Vera’s third person story are carefully alternated so that neither Randy nor Vera can know the other is a Lesbian until Randy finds out, long after Vera’s death. That’s another sorrow. I was happy for Randy that gay liberation freed her from the prison her grandmother lived in. But Vera’s story dominates. And what a story it is, starting with a pogrom in Ukraine and sweeping through most of the 20th century, creating a background of struggle to the changes so important for the LGBTQ community following Stonewall.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. Not literary, but weighty. It's somewhat of a family saga, about a Jewish immigrant woman in the early 20th century and how difficult it is for her being a lesbian during that time. It alternates with her granddaughter's (also a lesbian) story from the 1970s, so there's a bit of suspense as you wonder how the characters from the older story turned into the versions of themselves you see later. But mostly the plot has only a few dramatic moments and is about the arc of a life and history.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It's an epic story, told through characters who mattered to me. Vera's Will spans the twentieth century and three generations, taking us from Russian pogroms to immigrant struggles, from family-ravaing homophobia to GLBT resistance. Ettinger's prose is direct and strong. Her story is rich with social and cultural detail, alive with generously-drawn characters, and unflinching in its political passion.

[Julia Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally finished this book. While the story was quite engaging, I had trouble following the plot line & remembering the characters. Perhaps the difficulties stemmed from the fact that I was reading it on Kindle.