A Time to Live is the exciting and inspiring story of a young girl who discovers her Jewish identity amidst a web of danger and family crises. Marian Asher grew up in an assimilated Jewish home in Far Rockaway, cut off from all contact with her religious relatives in Florida and Israel. At eighteen, she was on the threshold of adult life. She had enrolled in college, and with the approval of her parents, she was engaged to be married to a medical student names Neal Brennan, the son of a wealthy doctor, who also happened to be a Gentile. Then her grandfather died, and her world turned upside-down. Her grandfather, Reb Mordechai Asher, had been a religious Jew, and Marian had loved him very much. Marian's parents had always stood as a barrier to minimize contact between her and her grandfather, but at the funeral, Marian is overcome by a flood of emotions which launch her on a journey of discovery into herself and her family's past. She meets Naomi, the diminutive but intense granddaughter of Rabbi Isaacs, and the compassionate and sensitive Shaindee, who has a mysterious past of her own. The first contacts are strained and prickly, but gradually friendships develop, and through these friendships, Marian learns about the wondrous beauty and satisfaction of a Torah-true Jewish life. But as she draws closer to Naomi and Shaindee and becomes more aware of her Jewish identity, Marian comes into sharp conflict with her parents, her fiance and her other friends, especially the Jew-hating Kurt, her fiance's closest buddy. This touching yet fast-paced story spans a multitude of diverse settings from the horrors of the concentration camps to the scene of an unsolved murder in Boston, from a manic excursion in Coney Island to a gala wedding in Brooklyn. In the end, it is the warm story of how a shattered family is brought together by a spirited and courageous young girl who will let nothing stand in the easy of her indomitable search for the truth.
by Chana Stavsky Rubin