Unlike those brave CNN anchors, Wolf Blitzer and Fareed Zakaria, I am afraid to have a DNA test from Ancestry.com. I might discover my husband and I are too close for comfort – Sorry kids! Let me explain.
Everyone who has read our book, Jewish Luck, knows of my serendipitous meeting with Vera in Leningrad, but I had another serendipitous meeting - - with my future husband, Harry Adler. The agent of this meeting was the unlikely Therese, Hennepin County Medical Center psychodynamic psychology intern, a nice Catholic girl from the Minnesota Iron Range with dreams of marrying a Jewish doctor.
On October 14, six weeks after our introduction at the posh downtown apartment building in which Harry and Therese resided, Harry’s friend and self-appointed life coach, Rob Schilit (z”l), called to ask Harry “how serious?” Harry called to ask me the same question, which I refused to discuss over the...
Featuring: A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman (NY: Harper, 2014)* and Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel – A Graphic Novel by Anya Ulinich (NY: Penguin, 2014).
If you want to read an authoritative high-brow book review on either of these books, hop to the New York Times Book Review where both books are highly touted. If you want to read a Midwesterner's account of how I connect to these books and how it relates to our book, Jewish Luck, keep reading.
These novels have something in common besides being extremely funny, well written, and, no doubt, somewhat autobiographical. Both are written by Soviet émigrés who came to the US at a young age. Boris Fishman arrived in New York City at age 9 from Minsk; however, his neighborhood in Brooklyn might better be named New Minsk. Anya Ulinich immigrated from Moscow to Arizona at age 17.
What better topic for these Americanized emigrés... 
Perhaps because she is close to her “relative,” the Queen, or perhaps because she is even further from St. Petersburg.
The real reason is that she was hired by a very progressive telecommunications company, Millicom, where the Swedish concept of lagom (the average is good enough) does not rule. She has global responsibility for procurement of services and will be working out of three hubs. Her main base is London and she will also be visiting Luxembourg and Miami (where we hope to celebrate with her and Vera).
Vera and Alexei have been busy on their “pirate island” procuring a new boat more suited to their recreational purposes. They has also attained citizenship in the Caribbean and their son, Lev, is now going on his second year as a US citizen. Mention was made in a previous blog of Vera’s Hollywood connection to RD’s movie, The Kitchen Boy. Vera says... 
