Flower Toward the Sun

by Marcia R. Rudin

In 1905, Rebecca leaves her Jewish shtetl in the Ukraine to join her fiancé, Samuel, in Milwaukee. Ingrid leaves her orphanage in Norway to become the Picture Bride of Lars, a widowed Norwegian farmer in North Dakota.

But as Rebecca and Ingrid are processed together at Ellis Island, officials put them on the wrong trains and each is sent to the other’s final destination.

Lars takes Rebecca to his farm and promises to help her find her way back to Samuel. Samuel convinces his family to take Ingrid in until they can locate Rebecca and return her to Lars.

Alone in a strange country and unable to speak English, Ingrid and Rebecca struggle against conflicting religions and cultures. It is hatred at first sight for the feisty Ingrid and Samuel and his Jewish family. Lars does not understand Rebecca’s traditional Jewish practices. Both women attempt to escape to find their promised new lives in America, but fail and reluctantly return to their alien environments to build new lives.

After nearly a year, Samuel and Ingrid journey to the isolated farm in North Dakota, but will the love that has blossomed between Lars and Rebecca force the four to follow a new destiny?

Genres: Fiction

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

The author of the novels Hear My Voice and Flower Toward the Sun, ​Marcia R. Rudin was born in Pueblo, Colorado and grew up in Champaign, Illinois. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Boston University, majoring in Philosophy and Religion, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honorary society. Ms. Rudin also studied Social Anthropology and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, earning Second Honors. She received a joint MA Degree in Religion from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, specializing in Philosophy of Religion. She studied for a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. After teaching History of Religion at Brooklyn Friends School, she joined the faculty of William Paterson College in New Jersey, where she taught philosophy, history of religion, and philosophy of education at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She has also been a guest professor and lecturer at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida.

She is co-author with Rabbis A. James Rudin and Hirshel Jaffe of Why Me? Why Anyone?, published by St. Martin’s Press and reissued by Jason Aronson, Inc., and with Rabbi Rudin of Prison or Paradise? The New Religious Cults, published by Fortress Press. She edited and contributed to the anthology Cults on Campus: Continuing Challenge, an International Cult Education Program book published by the International Cultic Studies Association.

She is also a screenwriter and playwright. She was a resident in screenwriting at the MacDowell in 2003. Nine of her plays have received fifteen productions in Manhattan, New Jersey, Santa Cruz and San Diego, California, Charles Town, West Virginia, Bonita Springs, Florida, and Canton, Michigan. Two have been produced as podcasts by MIssing Links, a division of Between Acts, and several have received staged readings. Her ten-minute play Paul Newman Hops the Amtrak Auto-Train was a winner in 2006 of the ETC playwriting contests of Naples (FL) Players at Sugden Community Theatre and was read over radio station WGCU-FM in Fort Myers. Her one-act play Closings was the Silver Medalist at the 2017 New Voice Play Festival at the Old Opera House Theatre Company and Arts Centre in Charles Town, West Virginia.

She blogs over IPubForum.

She has published articles and book reviews about destructive cults, women rabbis, black Jews, genetic engineering, Nazi war criminals, Holocaust refugees, and Jewish feminism in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Congressional Quarterly Researcher, Encyclopedia Judaica, Present Tense, Fifty Plus, Worldview, The New Leader, Catholic Digest, Our Town, Religious Education, P.S.: The Intelligent Guide to Jewish Affairs, The New York University Review of Law and Social Change, PTA Today, National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Bulletin, Campus Law Enforcement Journal, Dialogue, The Antigonish Review, Keeping Posted, The Cult Observer, The Advisor, Cultic Studies Journal, Boston University Alumni Magazine, and ReformJudaism.org.

An acknowledged international expert on destructive cults for over thirty years, Ms. Rudin is the Founding Director of the International Cult Education Program, a preventive-education outreach of the International Cultic Studies Association. She has written widely about cults and psychological manipulation, appeared at conferences and panel discussions, and lectured on these topics throughout the U.S. and in Canada and Poland. Ms. Rudin has been cited as a cult expert in such publications as The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Enquirer, The Los Angeles Times, Modern Maturity, The Chicago Sun Times, The Portland Oregonian, The Austin-American Statesman, and Woman’s Day.

Her media appearances include “Dateline NBC”; “CBS Evening News”; “CBS Morning News”; “Donohue”; National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”; “Geraldo Rivera”; “Rivera Live”; “Larry King Live”; “Good Morning, New York”; CBS-TV’s “Nightwatch” and

Reviews

[Eve Rudin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful story about about two women finding their way when coming to America at the turn of the 20th century. Switched at the train station so that they are sent to the wrong places to meet their intended husbands (one is Jewish from the shtetl and the other is Norwegian), this book explores the hardships of life, religion and love. It was a page turner and not just writing this because the author is my mother!

[Linda]

This is a lovely story, and somewhat predictable. The goodness of the main characters shines on in my memory of the book.

[Rachel Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flower Toward the Sun is an awesome book. I love that it brings together different cultures. I also love that it is a story about true love.

[Betsie Bush · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some loose ends that I would have liked to have been resolved, but otherwise, I was captivated by the premise of the story and the various relationships.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting premise and well developed story about two women who are travelling from Europe to America to join their intended husbands at the beginning of the 20th century.