Grandfather

... Mom is the first word that we say. When you were taken away from your mother, but you continue to see her every day and call her sister, what will you feel? And what can you do if such is the custom of your people? The heartbreaking, beating in the very heart of Stella Pondon’s novel about mountain women speaks in the heart of literally everyone, as if written about him.

A story about the fate of women in a family of mountain Jews of the early nineties of the last century. Place of action: Pyatigorsk-Makhachkala. Nathan and Hannah gave birth to seven children, but Nathan fell out of love with his wife and often began to go left, as is often the case in large Caucasian families - the couple continued to live together, Hannah reconciled, but stopped taking care of herself completely. In order to feel young again, Hannah took her first daughter from her first -born Dovid and raised her herself. It turns out that this is in the order of things in mountain families, and the mother, who is the first after God, in general no one can argue in anything. The girl was named a sheker - in honor of her grandmother (again - a great honor to bear the name of the grandmother). Hannah and Nathan lived very richly, but sparingly: money and jewelry were given only to sons and grandchildren, and women were kept in a black body. Sheker, although it was formally the youngest and most beloved in the Hannah family, constantly yearned for her biological mother Zina (wife of Dovid). The intrigue of the story is that the sheker always wants to go to his real mom and dad, but traditions and customs, the foundations do not allow the teenager to do this. Before us in all vivid details, the fate of mountain women reveal.