Histria Books is pleased to announce the paperback release of A Woman of Valor by Fred Skolnik. This novel is published by Histria Fiction, an imprint of Histria Books dedicated to outstanding original works of fiction.
A Woman of Valor follows the Lefkovitzes, a Jewish textile family in interwar Bialystok, where work, faith, politics and private ambition meet under one crowded roof. As the younger generation begins to question the life laid out for them, the family must negotiate change both within its walls and beyond them.
This is historical fiction with its sleeves rolled up. Bialystok is not a distant setting but a busy, intimate place of factory shifts, Sabbath meals, schoolrooms, rented rooms and fiercely held opinions. Arguments over Zionism, socialism, marriage, education and women’s independence give the book an immediacy that feels strikingly current. The Lefkovitzes are not presented as symbols of history. They are funny, stubborn, loving, divided and full of plans. That closeness matters: it lets readers encounter a world through its ordinary pleasures, tensions and routines, rather than from the safe distance of hindsight. A Woman of Valor brings emotional range and human complexity to a pivotal chapter of Jewish life.
Fred Skolnik was born in New York City and lives in Israel. A graduate of the City College of New York and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he has worked as an editor, translator, farmer, hotel manager and financial comptroller in the textile industry. He is the author of six previous novels, including The Other Shore, Death and Basic Forms, as well as three novels published under the name Fred Russell and two story collections. Skolnik is editor-in-chief of the 22-volume second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, recipient of the 2007 Dartmouth Medal, and has also served as co-editor of The New Encyclopedia of Judaism and senior editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust.
