Our book group chose this as a holiday selection. It is heartwarming and quick to read -- perfect for the busy fall/winter season -- but also raises a lot of issues for discussion. Some of us learned the story of Hanukkah we hadn't known before, and we were all introduced to the unique issues interfaith families deal with all the time. I would recommend this to readers of any faith as a moving, informative book that presents a lot of information in a very sweet package.

This is the story of an interfaith family whose child gets sick during the holidays -- a terrific book for learning how interfaith families manage, but also one any mother will identify with and hold her breath over. If you want to read something that will make you appreciate the true meaning of the holidays, this is it. Also makes a great gift.

Safe Passage tells the story of Mag Singer, a mother of seven boys. Mag admits that she is a detatched mother. She never wanted her boys, until they were born. But when her middle child, Percival, a marine and the most troubled of the seven is feared dead in the midst of a terrorist bombing, the family gathers together and suddenly Mag realizes how important her family really is.

Anyone who lived through the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in the early '60s or wants to know what it was like -- or who remembers (or wonders) about the rules college women had to endure (and college men didn't), will enjoy this lively, lighthearted novel that is also full of timely issues. Beryl Rosinsky thinks she's going to escape her civil-rights-activist mother when she runs away to college in the South, but instead she's forced to come to terms with exactly the kinds of prejudices and biases her mother is fighting.

Ellyn Bache serves up an interesting tale of relationships and identity in The Activist's Daughter. Living in bustling, Kennedy-era Washington, D.C., the Rosinsky family would appear to blend in well with their surroundings, if not for father Leonard's despondance over his reputation and career being destroyed after the McCarthy trials and mother Leah's determination to single-handedly help every worthy civil rights cause in the nation. Embarassed and angered by her mother's attention toward other people (and lack thereof toward her own family), seventeen-year-old Beryl wishes to break altogether from the activist's shadow. The best answer appears to be enrolling in an out-of-state college--North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which in 1963 was more likely a different country.

The Activist's Daughter is straightforward storytelling and a good recommendation for teenage readers interested in segregation and the Civil Rights Era. Though I would have liked to have seen more interaction between Beryl and her mother (who disappears mid-story and seems to pop up when convenient), Bache compensates for this strong conflict by keeping Leah in spirit, as seen in Beryl as watch her grow. Anyone frustrated with what television season has to offer in terms of "strong women" should pick us this book instead.