When Leah’s mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it becomes clear that there will be no reconciliation with the woman who has played a big and dangerous role in her life. As Leah chronicles her mother’s descent into nothingness, she recreates and reimagines the life of a dynamic, multifaceted, and mercurial woman who struggled with her mental health and who had difficulty navigating the role of wife and mother. With pained honesty tempered by well-exercised empathy, Lisa Solod’s debut novel Shivah: A Novel from Memory connects deeply to the challenges of family and faith, and the potential for growth and peace.

Constructed in seven parts to mimic the seven days of shivah, the Jewish period of mourning wherein the mourners enter the home of the bereaved and sit and pray with them, Shivah is an exploration of difficult family relationships, of mental health, and of negotiating selfhood in the face of adversity.