Jennifer Anne Moses left behind a comfortable life in the upper echelons of East Coast Jewish society to move with her husband and children to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Searching for connection to her surroundings, she decided to volunteer at an AIDS hospice. But as she encountered a culture populated by French Catholics and Evangelical Christians, African Americans and Cajuns, altruistic nurses and nuns, ex-cons, street-walkers, impoverished AIDS patients, and healers of all stripes, she found she had embarked on an unexpected journey of profound self-discovery. In a keenly observed memoir that embraces both pathos and humor, Moses takes us into a world that is strange and sad but also suffused with the holy. As witness to dire poverty and extreme adversity, Moses discovers a deeper commitment to her own faith—Judaism that asks not for blind belief, but rather daily commitment. She recounts the challenges of taking on a life committed to God in a postmodern world that has little use for the divine. Telling her story of redemption with an honesty that goes right for the guts, she leaves the reader with new hope.
Outstanding Book, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Regional Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou

Self-Help

Moses, Jennifer

Personal Transformation

University of Wisconsin Press

Food and Whine: Confessions of a New Millennium Mom

No one knows family life like Jennifer Moses -- its hilarious chaos, its everyday dramas, the bone-weariness and the pure joy every mother feels. Speaking to the generation Erma Bombeck left behind, this mother of three and widely published journalist addresses today's parents with a down-home, perfectly targeted humor that strips aside pretense and reveals the poignant, comic truth about motherhood. And what is that truth? Something like breakfast, Power Rangers, snack, tantrum, lunch, remote-controlled robot attack, second snack, snotty nose, supper, multivehicle trike collision, more snack, bath-time, story-time, pure exhaustion, bed. Toss in new twins, a husband in the midst of a career change, a mother struggling with cancer, an extended family of quirky characters, and her own incessant -- and laugh-out-loud -- conflicts, and you have a year in the life of Jennifer Moses: mother, wife, daughter, and marvelous observer of women's lives. Illuminating motherhood with her wit and taking no prisoners in the process, Moses captures the comic underbelly of family life today, rife with Volvos, action figures, and microwave cuisine -- in a story as much about survival as it is, finally, about love. The trials, tribulations, and triumphs of one woman's experience of home -- a place where diapers smell, husbands are domestically impaired, and dinner is fine straight from the freezer -- are described with sidesplitting honesty. As one of Moses's devoted readers once told her, "You say out loud what I secretly think." But Food and Whine isn't just the humorous account of one mother and her kids. This is a story of families extending over generations, of how life in its simple and sometimes painful beauty goes on, and how, over the course of a year, a family can find its own peace. Behind her irrepressible wit, Moses, like all mothers, has watched her life fall into turmoil: her own direction uncertain, her marital relationship transformed into a child-care collective, the tables turned as her own parents age and fall ill. These powerful moments are handled with the blunt high humor of a clear-eyed witness who backs away from neither the terrors nor the wonders of motherhood. With marvelous insight, a sharp wit, and ready warmth, Jennifer Moses leads us through the valley of the shadow of family life and helps us find hilarious redemption on the back stoop.

FOOD AND WHINE: Confessions of a New Millennium Mom

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Simon&Schuster

Hailed by many as Erma Bombeck's heir apparent, Jennifer Moses -- journalist, essayist, prizewinning short story writer, and mother of three -- brilliantly transforms the mundane into the hilarious in her no-holds-barred record of a year in the life -- and the kitchen -- of a modern-day mom. Writing about the year in which her twins were born, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and her husband decided to change careers, Moses regales readers with funny anecdotes and gut-wrenchingly true pictures of the chaos and joys of family life. Capturing the essence of motherhood today in all of its complexities and contradictions, this true-to-life story (that reads like a novel) dares to say out loud what moms secretly think.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Touchstone

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moses, Jennifer. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Moses, Jennifer