More Friend-of-Jewcy Pimpage: Ed Schwarzschild

The man responsible for our uber-popular "Letters to Ahmadinejad" series, Edward Schwarzschild, has just published a collection of short stories, entitled The Family Diamond. We're proud to have this as Jewcy's Featured Book this month.

Ed's first novel, Responsible Men, was a San Fransisco Chronicle "Best Book of the Year."

Hollis Seamon at Chronogram said you should read The Family Diamond

in small bites, savoring its richness, making it last. This collection provides real emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic nourishment, never offering simplistic resolutions to complex situations. Confronting family crises, characters hover between grief and solace. An elderly couple faces heart surgery and sudden blindness. Siblings squabble while visiting their terminally ill mother. A wife leaves her husband, stealing a pickup truck along the way. The final story tilts the balance toward hope, giving readers a glimpse of the joyous rejuvenation of Mildred and Charles Diamond, the bubba and zayde who appear in four stories. We want to believe in this miracle, but Schwarzschild does not allow easy comfort. Even the angelic figure who delivers a dream-message to Mildred is fallible. “I’m missing a wing,” he says. “I fall down whenever I try to fly. You wouldn’t believe how many broken bones I’ve had.”