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Ask for a Convertible is a wonderfully assured debut that ponders what it means to be Israeli, to be American, or to be a little bit of both. In there connected stories, Danit Brown introduces Osnat Greenberg: a slightly fatalistic, darkly funny, and utterly winning heroine who is struggling to find her place in the world.

In the 1980s, Osnat moves with her American father and Israeli mother from Tel Aviv to Michigan. She's leaving behind security threats and a crazy grandmother, but entering a world where she seems doomed never to fit in. Her father hated absolutely everything about life in Israel; her mother hates absolutely everything about life in America.

Osnat's best friend and sort-of-boyfriend, Sanjay, Indian by birth, instructs her on the "arts" of assimilation; later, as Osnat moves into her twenties, a series of boyfriends all named Chris misguidedly attempt to instill her with holiday cheer. An Israeli soldier visiting the United States makes Osnat realize that it's time to face what she believes is her cowardly past. But it's her friend Harriet, an American who as a child practiced holding her breath just in case Nazis took over the Midwest, who somehow manages to show Osnat the meaning of home.

As the perspective shifts among the characters--spanning fifteen years, returning to Tel Aviv and then going back again to Michigan--Osnat tries (and often fails) to belong. Danit Brown gives is an irreverent portrait of a young woman for whom finding a foothold in the world is an obsession, a challenge, and a great adventure.


From the Hardcover edition.

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