Little Bride (Solomon) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews 
In her emotionally honest debut novel, The Little Bride, Anna Solomon draws on an 1880s U.S. homesteading movement called Am Olam. Jewish newcomers were encouraged to settle out west as pioneers. The result wasn't some cheerful "little shtetl on the prairie," as Solomon's heroine discovers. Impoverished Minna Losk is a 16-year-old Jewish mail- order bride from Odessa and one of the more realistic pioneers depicted in recent historical fiction. Suffering hasn't hewn her into a plucky stereotype. Instead, she is someone the reader instantly empathizes with. She wants love, and ends up with a husband twice her age. She craves comfort, and ends up in a South Dakota one-room sod hut. A fascinating if sometimes bleak page turner.
USA Today


An engrossing slice of history...[that] offers a precious glimpse of the wondrously strange story of Jewish immigration evoked by Anna Solomon in her debut novel. Like other talented young Jewish—American novelists Jonathan Safran Foer and Dara Horn, Solomon fruitfully imagines faraway times and climes in The Little Bride— Europe's Odessa and America's Dakota Territory in the late 19th century, specifically - and creates a winning 16-year-old heroine in Minna Losk.... [A] moving debut.
Miami Herald


(Staff pick.) A friend gave me Anna Solomon’s The Little Bride and I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s the story of a Russian mail-order bride who ends up in the American West with a rigidly Orthodox husband—but really, that’s just scratching the surface. Last week, we fielded an advice question from a woman wondering about “good reads” that also had literary merit—I wish I’d finished this one at the time, as it matches that description perfectly.
Sadie Stein - Paris Review


Solomon's intensely scripted debut was inspired by the Am Olam movement of the late 19th century in which hundreds of Jews fleeing persecution were drawn to a utopian vision of communal agrarian life across the United States. Unfortunately, Solomon abandons the fertile promise of the novel's Tolstoy-worthy premise, and limits the story's scope to one eccentric family in self-imposed exile from an Am Olam community in South Dakota, and tells the tale from the narrow point of view of a disgruntled mail-order bride.... Solomon does deliver plenty of atmosphere and crisis, if not a convincing story, and establishes herself as a writer to watch.
Publishers Weekly


Late 1880s Russia offers few choices for 16-year-old Minna Losk...[who] leaves the hopelessness, the pogroms, and the poverty for a farm in South Dakota, where, as a mail-order bride, she receives an unfriendly welcome from her husband-to-be.... Verdict: Solomon writes unsparingly of the harsh realities that women like Minna faced on the American frontier. Although the concluding chapters seem rushed, most readers will feel compelled to stay with this page-turner to its solemn finish. A strong debut novel, highly recommended for those who appreciate exceptional historical fiction.—Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal