The Terrarium

A nine year old Reform Jewish boy growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1968 moves with his family from the VERY Jewish Squirrel hill neighborhood to the VERY gentile, and anti-Semitic Mt. Lebanon. For the first time in his life he encounters bigotry and in the process not just against Jews but blacks, Asians, and LGBTQ. Also he begins to realize that his own family, which he took for granted as idyllic, has hidden secrets. Along his journey to a dramatic set of realizations, he is exposed to his first sexual awakening, understanding the secrets carried by those around him, and the darkness of abuse that hides in families with a veneer of respectability. It is a beautifully told story that at times is laugh out loud funny, and others moving to tears, that takes place in the 1960s, a decade of transformation for all of America.

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