The Marriage Box

Paperback On Sale Date: May 2, 223 Fiction / Jewish Fiction / Women Fiction / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce Fiction / Friendship 288 pages 21.6 cm H | 14 cm W When Casey gets into trouble hanging out with the wrong crowd in New Orleans, her parents decide to move back to their Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn—where, swayed by the community’s Middle Eastern values and her parents’ traditional wishes, Casey marries Michael at eighteen, thinking she can adjust to Sephardic ways. But can she? Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 197s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn.  In this new and foreign world, families gather weekly for Shabbat dinner; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands. Casey is at first shocked by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she’s enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn’t want her to go to college; he wants her to have a baby instead.  Can Casey integrate these two opposing worlds, or will she have to leave one behind in order to find her way?