Radiant as the Stars: A Novel
by Elaine Elinson
On the Brink of Revolution, One Young Woman Risks Everything
At a time when thousands of Jews are fleeing the violence of Tsarist Russia for America, twenty-year-old Anna Reader makes a dangerous choice: she goes back.
Returning to the Ukrainian shtetl her family escaped six years earlier, Anna joins her cousin Chava in the Jewish Labor Bund, a growing movement fighting oppression on the eve of revolution. But the home she remembers has changed. Political suspicion is everywhere, Anna is now viewed as an outsider, and speaking out can come at a terrible cost.
When Chava is arrested by the Tsarist authorities, Anna risks everything to save him. With betrayal closing in and imprisonment looming, she must decide how far she is willing to go for justice—and what she is prepared to sacrifice for the people and ideals she loves.
Set against the turbulent years leading up to the Russian Revolution, Radiant as the Stars is a gripping historical novel of courage, loyalty, and one young woman’s determination to change a world on the brink of upheaval.
Praise for Radiant as the Stars: A Novel
“A book to gobble up and regret when it ends.”
—Anne Whiteside, author of The Moon in Splinters
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About the Author
Elaine Elinson is coauthor of the award-winning Wherever There’s a Fight and Development Debacle, which was banned by the Marcos dictatorship. Named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, her work has been published widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. and the Jewish Book Council. Elinson served two decades as the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News. She speaks Russian and sings in Yiddish. She lives in San Francisco and this is her debut novel.
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