Sisters of Fortune
By Esther Chehebar (Random House)

Fortune Cohen, named after her living grandmother in keeping with Syrian Jewish tradition, is the middle of three sisters. She and her siblings grow up deeply rooted in their Brooklyn neighborhood, with the clear expectation that they will marry, raise children and live their lives within the community—just as their parents and grandparents did before them.

In this debut, Esther Chehebar captures the Syrian Jewish way of life with nuance, affection and humor, illuminating a community grounded in history and culture even as the scaffolding that holds that life in place begins to shift.

With its multiple interwoven love stories among sisters, the book has drawn comparisons to the work of Jane Austen. Fittingly, Pride and Prejudice appears at the top of a college syllabus that Fortune stumbles upon—a poignant discovery, given that she’s been working at her father’s discount shop since high school instead of pursuing college. She feels an almost magnetic pull toward the book.

Like the Bennet sisters in Austen’s classic, Fortune and her sisters—Nina, the eldest, and Lucy—as well as their friends talk, dream and obsess about marriage prospects as they find themselves caught between tradition and their own hearts.

Told in the alternating voices of the three sisters, the novel explores their divergent paths: Fortune, recently engaged, is wrestling with quiet doubts about her fiancé and the life ahead; Nina, unmarried at 26, stands at the edge of what the community views as spinsterhood; and Lucy, still in high school, draws the attention of a much older bachelor from one of the neighborhood’s most prominent families.

Food also runs through the novel. It is solace for the lovelorn and the centerpiece of family life yet seen as the enemy by women working hard to lose any extra ounces. The sisters’ grandmother, known as Setto, teaches them to form perfect grape leaves as she doles out advice. Sally, the sisters’ mother, has her own catering business and is known to make kibbe so good that it entices guests off the dance floor at simchas.

In this community, Chehebar writes, “the only thing worse than having to cook for 30 people is not having 30 people to cook for.”

The author, who grew up in Brooklyn’s notoriously insular Syrian Jewish community, bring an insider’s knowledge to her novel. She takes readers behind many closed doors—of the mikveh, of ornate living rooms and of kitchens made spotless after marathons of cooking.

Reflecting on her neighborhood and its unique rhythms tied to the Jewish calendar, Fortune notes, “There’s forgiveness and bloodlines and a way of life that may seem inexplicable to others but makes perfect sense to those who live it.”

Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently of 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.