Shabbat Shalom, Mary Magdalene!

The novel Shabbat Shalom, Mary Magdalene! tells the story of American expat Connie, a native New Yorker who has been living in Rome for the last twenty-plus years. Set in 2015, a pilgrimage year, it describes Connie's curation of a much-delayed exhibit of Medieval and Renaissance saint paintings. At the same time, she is coping with unexpected house guest, Josh; her daughter Giulia's increasing upset at not having been raised Jewish; and her complicated relationship with her mother and sister. Taking up issues of identity, art, saints, and mother-daughter relationships, the novel centres female lives and the ways multiple roles (mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, lover, and so forth) inform each other. Studded with jokes, it includes flashbacks to 1970s New York City and extensive use of ekphrasis, the description of art works. Also included is a situating essay discussing how the novel came to include discussion of Judaism and Jewish identity and how the book fits into an existing genre of Jewish-American novels.