Copyright ©2020 by Mary E. Carter
A Non-Swimmer
Considers
Her Mikvah
On Becoming Jewish After
Fifty —Essays—
A Death Delayed
Agent Orange: Hidden
Killer
of Vietnam
—A Remembrance—
I, Sarah Steinway
—A Novel—
“This book is superb.
To my knowledge
it is without peer in style
or approach.”
—Rabbi Paul Citrin
2016 WINNER
NEW MEXICO–ARIZONA
BOOK AWARDS
CLICK HERE TO READ
SAMPLE CHAPTER
Danny lies dying here in
this place, dying as
surely as if he had
stopped a bullet in
Vietnam in 1968. Of the
many enemies hidden in
those jungles, Agent
Orange was perhaps the
most insidious.
2018 FINALIST
NEW MEXICO–ARIZONA
BOOK AWARDS
“An utterly original
imagining of a post-
apocalyptic world,
lightly using the tropes
of dystopian and
disaster fiction while
depending on ingenuity
and emotional depth to
carry the story.”
—Quarter-Finalist
2017 Publishers Weekly
BookLife Prize
2018 WINNER
NEW MEXICO–ARIZONA
BOOK AWARDS
FINALIST
NATIONAL JEWISH
BOOK AWARDS
NEW!
The Three-Day Departure of Mrs. Annette Zinn
—A Novel—
“I always look forward to getting to know Mary E.
Carter’s characters. The Jews, and the righteous non-
Jews as well, have a pintele yid: a spark of Jewishness
that helps them navigate this complex world with
sensitivity. I enjoyed the exploration of the soul hovering
for three days and was intrigued with the idea that it
might remember details of events that were forgotten or
hidden during its time in this world. During her three-day
departure, Mrs. Annette Zinn discovers that her memories
have the potential to serve as a blessing.”
—Rabbi Jack Shlachter, HaMakom, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“
”
The storytelling is by turns very funny and very serious, confident and
uncompromisingly weird. Mary E. Carter has a voice with unquestionable
power, and we look forward to reading more from her.
—Judges’ Remarks 2018 National Jewish Book Awards for I, Sarah Steinway
[ CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE REVIEW ]
Winner - Best Religious Book
2019 New Mexico - Arizona Book Awards
Good i - iPhone photos by Mary E. Carter
A color collection of 90 iPhone photos.
Click here for more information.
I, Sarah Steinway
Finalist Debut Novel Category - 2018 National Jewish Book Awards
Sarah is an antihero for our age: a seventy-five-year-old woman, armed with her own
chutzpah and wit, a cowboy hat, a rabbinical ordination, and a shotgun that she’s still
figuring out how to use. The novel is set in the near future, in which a global flood is steadily
devouring the houses and Costcos of the world, but I, Sarah Steinway has a sensibility and
an immediacy that grounds us and grips us from the opening scene. Sarah wrestles with both
her physical and spiritual survival. As a self-identified secular Jew faced with an apocalypse
of biblical proportions, she turns to religion — not necessarily for answers, but for survival
tactics. This book, and its protagonist, are never afraid of confronting the Big Questions, nor
content to settle with easy answers. The storytelling is by turns very funny and very serious,
confident and uncompromisingly weird. Mary E. Carter has a voice with unquestionable
power, and we look forward to reading more from her. —Judges’ Remarks
—Review from Jewish Book Council—
By Inger SaphireBernstein
– April 9, 2019
Sarah Steinway, seventy five years old, is a survivor of the catastrophic Emperor Floods that
covered the Pacific coast cities and erased the boundaries of the San Francisco Bay, leaving
no dry shore until New Mexico. With a manual typewriter, in her treehouse perch above the
black waters of the former San Francisco Bay, she describes her experiences for future
readers (if there are any). She writes of death, beauty, and savagery (there is an
unforgettable scene of a vicious battle between shorebirds). She meets several interesting
survivors who arrive at her treehouse, including two rabbis. And she starts to think about
God and turns to the Torah.
As with most dystopian novels, the reader is anxious to know the cause of the killing
catastrophe. Apparently, at first, the water level increases of an inch or two every other week
were barely noticed. The people were told it was ‘fake news’ and that reports of rising waters
were false, going against visual evidence; most people complied. Periodic high tides and
flooding suddenly became the Emperor Floods that drowned all before it and never receded.
This is a very Jewish novel. Sarah provides midrashim (commentary) on the Torah. We are
treated to an interview with Noah’s wife, an explanation as to why Pharaoh’s daughter drew
Moses out of the Nile, and a return to Noah and God’s promise to never again flood the
world. Quotes from Pirkei Avot head each chapter. Aside from these formal efforts, Jewish
references crop up frequently. Sarah writes lovingly about her husband Daniel, her bashert.
She recognizes a congruence with Sarah in the Torah, who laughed when told she would give
birth at ninety, while Sarah Steinway births a treehouse at seventy-five. And Sarah Steinway
says she will not be edited out, like Noah’s wife and Sarah. Oddly, many of the people Sarah
meets before and during the flood are Jewish; drowned Marin County might be a shtetl given
its density of Jews.
One element in the novel is particularly perplexing. Sarah has several opportunities to go to
higher ground in New Mexico – to “choose life” rather than bear survival. She chooses to
remain in her treehouse, close to her greatest love, her Taliesin house, designed by a student
of Frank Lloyd Wright. Her love for the house is woven into her love for her late husband,
Daniel. In the Acknowledgements, Mary Carter describes the novel as a love letter to her
Taliesin home. Proximity to a drowned house seems like a poor trade-off for years of solitude
and deprivation above a catastrophic flood. Perhaps one has to love a house deeply to
understand.
Inger Saphire-Bernstein is a health policy professional with extensive experience across
multiple health care delivery settings and the insurance industry. She has published a
number of articles and papers in the health policy field.