At the age of eighteen I hadn’t intended to escape the South, but that’s what I ended up doing. Fleeing from the good son that I was, and from a small stifling place where everyone knew me better than I knew myself, or thought they did.
Thirty-five years later, my husband and I bought a flat in an old house in my hometown of Savannah. I was back. But the foothold I’d gotten in the past turned out to be from a more remote time than I’d expected.
Also available from University of South Carolina Press
Liberty Street is where our townhouse is located, and also the name of my new book. It’s a house that came with a story: the rise and fall of a Southern Jewish family and a ghost story whose long-dead characters still haunt the present. Liberty Street chronicles my journey to understand the Solomon Cohen family and the way their lives intersected with their enslaved workers, Savannah’s Jewish community, and their Christian neighbors.
I became interested in the way we talk about the Civil War, its origins and aftermath. What do we remember? Or choose to forget? I came to know the denizens of Liberty Street 150 years before I moved there, and to understand my own story as a Jew, a Southerner, and an American.
This essay, which Moment magazine edited expertly and made look really great, is a taste of the research I’ve been doing over the last few years about the man who had my Savannah townhouse built–the tragedy of his life and the larger tragedy of the times in which he lived.
Essay | Searching for Solomon Cohen
“Friedman’s dismantling of myths becomes a thrilling mystery, a fearless reimagining, and a fresh historical portrait that seems to live and breathe. Scrupulous research and shimmering prose make for a fascinating read—I could not put it down. And neither will you.”
-Andrew Sean Greer, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Less
“Written with clarity, intelligence, precision, and a healthy dose of sultry Southern detail.”
– Aaron Hamburger, author of Hotel Cuba
“By the blending of memoir, history (through the eyes of place as character), and social commentary, Liberty Street: A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War is a strange and fully compelling bildungsroman, though from a distant perspective, which I’ve never really seen before.”
– Jonathan Rabb, author of Among the Living
Events
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Ordinary Disasters Book Conversation with Anne Cheng
October 11, 2024 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
E Shaver Booksellers, 326 Bull St, Savannah, GA 31401, USA
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American Jewish Historical Society Online Book Talk with Laura Arnold Leibman
October 29, 2024 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
https://ajhs.org/events/book-talk-liberty-street-a-savannah-family-its-golden-boy-and-the-civil-war/
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Katz JCC Festival of Arts, Books and Culture In-Person Book Talk
November 4, 2024 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Katz JCC, 1301 Springdale Rd, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003, USA
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Catamaran Literary Review Group Reading
November 13, 2024 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mechanics' Institute, 57 Post St, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA
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Port Jewish Center Virtual Book Talk
February 26, 2025 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Port Jewish Center, 20 Manorhaven Blvd, Port Washington, NY 11050, USA
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Contra Costa JCC Virtual Book Talk
February 27, 2025 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Contra Costa JCC, 1550 Parkside Dr #130, Walnut Creek, CA 94596, USA
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B'nai Torah Virtual Book Talk
March 18, 2025 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
B'nai Torah Congregation, 6261 SW 18th St, Boca Raton, FL 33433, USA