Praise for The Book of Jeremiah

The Book of Jeremiah is complex, nuanced, and complementary, a truly triumphant first step for Zuckerman’s burgeoning career.

—Jordan Ryder, reviewer, F(r)iction

One of the characters in Julie Zuckerman’s novel in stories, The Book of Jeremiah, refers to the biblical book of the same title as “all doom and gloom,” but Zuckerman’s book about Jeremiah Gerstler and his family is anything but. It contains considerable loss, trouble, sorrow, and suffering, but its thirteen stories are also laced with love, forgiveness, hope, optimism, and even what we might call salvation. It is a book that acknowledges the darkness while leading the Gerstlers, and us, toward the light—and toward each other. Reading these wise and moving stories, you’ll feel like a long-lost relative who’s returned home just in time for the family reunion.

—David Jauss, author of Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories and Nice People: New and Selected Stories II 

This book is the moving, endearing story of Jeremiah Gerstler—son, father, husband, academic, Jew—who tries over the course of his life to be the best person he can, and who will inspire his readers to do the same. Jumping backwards and forwards in time to hone in on various periods in Gerstler's life, this novel-in-stories offers a sensitive and nuanced portrayal of some of life's most painful and private moments. 

—Ilana Kurshan, author of If All the Seas Were Ink, winner of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

Jeremiah Gerstler delighted, enraged, and moved me, sometimes all at once. In The Book of Jeremiah, Julie Zuckerman has created nothing less than a life. These stories shimmer with tenderness and truth.

—Anna Solomon, author of Leaving Lucy Pear