Help Me, Rhonda and Other Stories

The fourteen stories in this collection are roughly evenly divided between those set in Israel and those set in the U.S.; a couple occur in vague, exotic places including an imagined Greenland. The lead--and longest--story, “Help Me, Rhonda,” features two American immigrants in Israel, a man and a woman, the former divorced and the latter single, who meet by chance and try to navigate the difficult maze of fear, doubt, and need that their encounter prompts in them. Other stories as well put romance, or failed romance, front and center--the quest for harmony and understanding amid dissonance and confusion. And still other stories are about a different kind of quest, dealing with mystical aspiration and the yearning for transcendence. This collection takes you where you don't expect to go, ranging from the straightforwardly realistic to the fantastical, from the nitty-gritty of life to dreamlike worlds.