| In a Pale Blue Light by Lily Poritz Miller Publication: October 5, 2009 Toronto Public Library eh List selection Presentations "In nuanced and beautiful prose, Lily Poritz Miller brings to pulsing life the story of a Jewish family that escapes Eastern Europe's pogroms only to be caught in South Africa's dangerous racial crosscurrents. Haunting yet reaffirming, with characters that triumph through quiet inner strength." - Sylvia Fraser "Lily's saga took me into a world I had never comprehended and still don't, but at least now I know what it looks, feels, sounds and smells like. She has done a superb job of detailing its inner aspects with all the warts associated with it, and occasionally a burst of flowers. Truly a labour of love, shrouded in pain... It will be with me a long time." - Farley Mowat "Vivid in its detail and authentic in its vision, this novel deals with a spirited, strong-willed girl faced with the world of adult decisions. How she copes and eventually triumphs is a tribute to the resiliency of youth. Lily Poritz Miller has her finger on the pulse of the human condition." - Alistair MacLeod "We walk hand in hand in the palpably heart-rending literary closeness that Lily Miller's narrative marks out for us with her well-drawn characters in a clear and compassionate voice. It is her skill of storytelling which binds our hands, we of various ethnicities, into a handshake that makes us eye-witnesses and participants of this vigorously tragic story. In a Pale Blue Light is poetic; a literary journal; a proclamation of the goodness and evil in all of us. But, above all, it is an unreservedly brilliant literary journal of human goodness." - Austin Clarke |
| A story of loss, defiance and change emerges from the magnificent setting of Cape Town in the late 1930s through the outbreak of World War II. Young Libka Hoffman is struggling with the death of her father and the social conventions that frown upon her relationships with her most trusted friends. Libka's exploration of socially forbidden territory eventually brings her to expulsion from her school and ostracism by her peers. Powerfully told in a unique voice, In a Pale Blue Light conveys an authentic and rarely achieved insight into Jewish life in South Africa during the tumultuous times around World War II. |
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| In a Pale Blue Light A Novel Author: Lily Poritz Miller ISBN: 9781894549837 List Price: $24.95 Format: Paperback; 240 pages Language: English Sumach Press, October 5, 2009 |
| The Newcomers The characters from In a Pale Blue Light depart from South Africa in the late 1940s and settle in a small New England town. |