Jean Ende launches "Houses of Detention," with Kaylie Jones

Author Jean Ende will be joined by writer and Akashic Books editor Kaylie Jones for a conversation, reception, and signing.

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So, what's a nice girl from a good family doing in a place like the Bronx House of Detention? Like many immigrants who flee persecution, when the Rosens escaped the Nazis, they thought life in America would be perfect. And for a while it was. Men developed successful businesses, a mink stole hung in every hall closet, overly abundant high-carb food graced all tables and grandma preserved traditions while finishing her weekly bottle of whiskey.

But then cracks appeared-a teenager pushed boundaries so far that the police became part of the family story, an in-law loudly mourned the loss of status he had in their village and a woman with stricter beliefs married into the family causing catastrophic rifts. Despite the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust, there's frequent humor. People who eat frozen, pre-packaged bagels are condemned, Cossacks who once incinerated towns are now Bar Mitzvah waiters carrying flaming cherries jubilee, the chippie dating the synagogue president carries a bejeweled poodle-shaped purse that barks in French and no one understands how WASPs can wear leather loafers without socks.

This book has enough twists, turns and turmoil to make anyone, immigrant or Mayflower descendant, cry, Oy Vey!

Advance Praise for Houses of Detention

“To read Jean Ende’s remarkable debut novel is to pull up a seat to a dining room table in the Bronx of the mid-20th century, a table packed with colorful characters and their plentiful gossip. Beneath all that kibitzing, however, is the real story: the essential and often heartrending tale of one family of Jewish immigrants searching for a new American life in the shadow of genocide and exodus.” —Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting and Oliver Loving

"Jean Ende’s Houses of Detention takes us deep into a historical American Jewish experience and a family working through the generational trauma of the Holocaust. Maybe they could be called typical, but every family’s tsuris is complicated. Ende has portrayed the lives of this family in a raw and unvarnished way, bringing a rare truth to this engrossing novel.” —Judy L. Mandel, New York Times bestselling author of Replacement Child and White Flag

Jean Ende is a native New Yorker who is trying to exorcise her background by writing fiction influenced by her Jewish family in the Bronx. Jean is a former newspaper reporter, a press secretary, banking VP, and marketing professor. Jean has had two dozen short stories published in magazines and anthologies in the US and England, and her work has been recognized by major literary competitions. She has attended Bread Loaf, Tin House Writers Conferences, and Women Reading Aloud, and she has taken MFA classes at Stony Brook College and is part of author Kaylie Jones’ master class. This is her first novel. Jean and her dog live in Brooklyn.

Kaylie Jones is the daughter of American author James Jones, who wrote From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line. Kaylie’s latest novel is The Anger Meridian, and she is the author of the acclaimed memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Her previous novels include A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, released as a Merchant Ivory Film in 1998. She co-chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $12,000 yearly to an unpublished first novel. Kaylie is also the publisher of Kaylie Jones Books, and imprint of Akashic Books. She is a full professor at SUNY Stony Brook in the Lichtenstein Center for Creative Writing and Literature, and also teaches at the Wilkes University Maslow Family Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

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