Paula Friedman

Profoundly emotional, conceptually acute, yet grounded in the grit and bravery of daily life, these 22 carefully crafted tales probe life's crisis moments and its ordinary hours. Among the stories: an encounter on a mountain trail wakens a veteran's numbed emotions; two French Resistance fighters balance desperate action and shy new love; a 1960s peace activist finds personal and political identity; to protect her baby, a single mother must fight her own terrors; a dying woman seeks a final shred of meaning; a "detained" immigrant child can no longer recall normal life; in 2460, an elegant alien and a human woman too briefly find love; Davey and Danly had, until now, outwitted each pandemic.

Profoundly emotional, conceptually acute, yet grounded in the grit and bravery of daily life, these 22 carefully crafted tales probe life's crisis moments and its ordinary hours. Among the stories: an encounter on a mountain trail wakens a veteran's numbed emotions; two French Resistance fighters balance desperate action and shy new love; a 1960s peace activist finds personal and political identity; to protect her baby, a single mother must fight her own terrors; a dying woman seeks a final shred of meaning; a "detained" immigrant child can no longer recall normal life; in 2460, an elegant alien and a human woman too briefly find love; Davey and Dani had, until now, outwitted each pandemic.

In the Sixty's predawn of the Women's Liberation Movement, young Nora Seikh, full of self-doubts after an abusive relationship and a failed subsequent attempt at love, searches amid Berkeley's budding antiwar movement for new ways to live and love, even while she struggles to find new paths to peace. Reporting antiwar news for the Berkeley Barb, she meets a flamboyant activist and, after a brief affair, is left pregnant and alone. She flings herself into the nonviolent vigil and demonstrations at the gates of Port Chicago, West Coast shipping point for weapons to the Vietnam War. There, she comes to share the demonstrators' mutual caring and to quietly love Ted, a vigil leader. On the night Ted races forward to stop a weapons truck that will not halt, she must confront her old self-doubts and fears, and risk all-life and freedom and even the child she bears-to reach him. Taking this step, she comes to see her own, and others', deepest need is to give love. Months later, Nora gives birth. No longer so self-doubting, still she cannot-in those years of the "baby-scoop era"-break through the overweening concept "a child needs a home with two parents," and gives up her baby in adoption, "for his sake." Then Nora must go on, trying to balance sorrows and hope-and to continue the struggle for a better world.

When Malca Bernovski rides a horse offtrail in Nixon-era Washington DC, she discovers the wounded antiwar leader Gavin Hareen, prime suspect in the lethal bombing of an army truck. The budding love between the sheltered Malca, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and the anguished, half-Syrian fugitive becomes a desperate struggle against injustice. From the White House to the Rockies, from the Warsaw Ghetto to the post-9/11 search of the lovers' child for her origins, this tale spans generations to delve urgent, timeless questions._________________ "Exciting, physically vivid, and romantic." --Ursula K. Le Guin, National Book Award, author of The Dispossessed, Lavinia, and many others "I could not stop reading this novel--I loved it " --Carole L. Glickfeld, Flannery O'Connor Award, author of Useful Gifts and Swimming Toward the Ocean "Vivid, humane, and wise, The Rescuer's Path had me from its first line to its last." --Cheryl Strayed, Pushcart Prize, author of Wild and Torch "In a story of what it means to do the right thing, these characters will break your heart and put it back together again." --Heather Sharfeddin, author of Damaged Goods "Timely yet rich with history, this tale compels you to turn page after page. This is the book you can't put down, the people you will remember, the vibrant story we all share." --Carol Denney, activist, writer, satirist, Fiddlers for Peace