Not From Here

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Kirkus Starred Review * BlueInk Starred Review * Midwest Book Review Book of the Month * Houston Chronicle Sunday Feature</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In a time of polarization about immigration Not From Here affords a much-needed deep breath. Kirkus</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Top recommendation to libraries and readers for its ability to shake the very foundations of modern belief. Midwest Book Review</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Amid so much tumult in their lives Lax repeatedly found not just resilience but optimism. Houston Chronicle</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Her depth of feeling for the topic is extremely powerful. BlueInk</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In between seven amazing stories the author discovers the story of her own family. The immigrant experience she says is the story of America. Jewish Book Council</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>An epic inquiry. - Booklist</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>When Leah Lax was asked to write an opera to celebrate local immigrants she began by spending a year listening to accounts of upheaval migration and arrival told her in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered America found its great beating heart.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In interludes between the astounding and powerful stories in Not From Here Leah uncovers the lost history of her Jewish family and finds a larger context for her own story. In a way she writes we Americans are all immigrants.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Leah has had a dual career as an author and librettist. Her previous book Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home was the first gay memoir ever to come out of the Jewish ultraOrthodox world now a modern opera by composer Lori Laitman.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Leah Lax understands that everyone has a story and a secret. To experience this ourselves we have only to read her utterly irresistible Not from Here.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>--GLORIA STEINEM</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>A masterwork! Brilliant profound heart-shattering hopeful - I couldn't breathe! Not From Here is full of stories of people who hang onto hope people who will not give up struggling for what could be and it's all interspersed with Leah's own extraordinary journey. This is the kind of book that leaves you forever changed.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>--CAROLINE LEAVITT NYTimes bestselling author</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>An amazing and powerful book of the struggles and triumphs of people from far away who we might have dismissed as 'other' except that Leah edges them dexterously into our hearts.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>--CHITRA DIVAKARUNI American Book Award winner author of The Last Queen</span></p><p></p>