Anything But Yes, by Joie Davidow
In two hundred and thirty eight pages of exquisite prose, Davidow tells a compellingstory of a young Jewish woman, Anna, cruelly torn from her close-knit, loving family at the age of eighteen, and thrown into the clutches of a catholic convent. It is 1749,and the Pope has secular power in Rome. The Jews are confined to ghettos and deprived of the normal rights of citizens to trade and move about freely.Most of all, the Church wants to convert Jews to Catholicism.They send in every type of priest, theologian and acolyte to persuade their current victim to convert.They are met with a young woman who has been educated in Latin, Hebrew and Italian and who has an unwavering faith.Her logic, in the teeth of sleep deprivation, inhuman conditions and lack of nourishment, frustrates the emissaries of the Pope.What shines through is the power of faith in the teeth of aggressive persuasion.
These priests, who themselves had converted from Judaism, felt the loss of theirown real faith when they saw how Anna stuck so steadfastly to her own.
Legalities and historical setting are conveyed seamlessly within clear descriptive prose.The desire to know what happened to Anna and the fact that it’s based on her contemporaneous diaries make this book hard to put down.
AH SURE AZURE 