Valley of Strength

Set in late–19th-century Galilee, Lapid depicts the hardships of life in the agricultural settlement Gai Oni in this dense historical novel. The heroine, Fania Mandelstam, is a strong-willed Russian Jew who, at 16, after her parents are murdered in a pogrom in Russia, is left to care for an insane brother and her own newborn—the result of her rape. She comes to Gai Oni, where Yehiel, a widower with two children, offers to marry her, and Fania lives as a peasant, working fields that won’t yield much more than onions and cucumbers. When Fania becomes an entrepreneur, her success causes tension with her idealistic husband, who believes hard labor is the only just way to live. Meanwhile, Fania’s memories prevent her from intimacy with Yehiel, and her independent streak causes her to struggle with her own desires and her duty to her family. Although Fania is a spirited female protagonist and Lapid highlights an important slice of history, her other characters remain underdeveloped and one-dimensional vehicles for a discussion of Israel’s history and politics, which is difficult to follow, while the ending’s strange twist lacks resolution. (Mar.)