Zelda Popkin: The Life and Times of an American Jewish Woman Writer

In this ambitious mix of biography, historiography, and family memoir, historian Popkin (A New World Begins) pays tribute to his grandmother, novelist Zelda Popkin, née Feinberg. Born in Brooklyn in 1898, Zelda worked as a newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania before moving to New York City in 1916. She married Louis Popkin, her boss at the Jewish Welfare Board, in 1919, and the couple opened Planned Publicity Service, one of the earliest public relations firms. Zelda longed to be an author, however, and wrote freelance magazine pieces while raising two sons and placating her disapproving husband, who died suddenly in 1943. Popkin charts Zelda’s decades-long, up-and-down writing career, focusing on her struggle with whether to focus on Jewish themes or on more universal “American” ones. Two of her most popular works—the Mary Carner detective series and the novel The Journey Home (which sold a million copies in 1945 and 1946)—highlighted issues of working women, while the third, Herman Had Two Daughters, blended fiction with autobiography to spotlight generational conflict between Jewish immigrant parents and their American-born children. Throughout, Popkin draws insightful comparisons between Zelda and other Jewish American writers and provides helpful synopses of her novels. This admiring profile restores a well-deserving author to the spotlight. Illus. (Feb.)