your next book club book.

“How did you get to be the woman you are today?” That is what 22-year-old, Ave asked her 85-year-old grandma, Addie Baum in my new favorite novel The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant.

Addie had a rough childhood in the early 1900's after her Jewish family unhappily immigrated from Russia to Boston. Life got better for Addie when a teacher persuaded her parents to let her go to high school when she was fifteen. Addie thrived in high school. This is where she decides she wants to go into journalism as a career. In the meantime, she is invited to join The Saturday Club, an organization for young girls and women run by The Settlement House. It is here that Addie makes lifelong friends that help and influence her for the rest of her life. Covering mostly years 1915-1931, Baum really places readers right in the novel, in the North End of Boston, watching a hardworking girl with spunk make something of herself.