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Joan Leegant

BUY WHEREVER YOU GO

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An extraordinary read, June 23, 2010. Five stars.

By Tamara B. Mendelson (Ra’anana, Israel)

I would have given this book six stars if the rating existed. I purchased this book in Israel as it has been released here ahead of the U.S. release. I can't say enough positive things about this book. After hearing Leegant speak I couldn't wait to start reading. And as an American living in Israel, I have read every novel out there about Israel and its relationship to America and the American Jewish Community. Leegant is very well versed in her subject matter. Her razor sharp observations make the book a revelation on every page. Her characters are flawed and believable. This book is honest, true, and written with deep insight and humanity. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand better the dynamics inside of Israel. Or anyone just interested in a hugely satisfying read. I have loaned my copy and bought three others for gifts. It's that good.

Breathtaking perceptiveness, July 17, 2010. Five stars.

By Nancy E. Bush

Some books dissolve in memory as soon as they are put down. Not a Joan Leegant book. Like An Hour in Paradise, her glowing collection of short stories, the novel Wherever You Go seems bound to leave something of itself with the reader. Through Leegant's deft structuring of the very different yet interlocking life transitions of three very different individuals, contemporary Israel itself becomes the primary character of this believably plotted and richly textured work. The result is not only a good read but a vividly real sense of the multi-layered complexity, contradictions, failure, and promise that describe not only her people and their relationships but the all-too-humanly dynamic organism that is the nation of Israel. Leegant's perceptiveness is sometimes breathtaking, which is largely why her people--and Israel itself--come to live and breathe on the page. Yes, the novel gets off to a leisurely beginning (perhaps just short of downright slow), but it builds deliberately, and by the halfway point becomes "couldn't put it down" material. Book clubs are sure to find this a natural, with substance enough for rewarding discussion on any number of topics and levels. It strikes me as coming close to creating as tangibly real a sense of Israel as Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone does of post-war Ethiopia. Definitely a winner.

Wherever You Go, July 10, 2010. Five stars.

By Harry Groome

Wherever You Go is an exceptional book, the best I've read in the last year. It's intelligently conceived, beautifully written and suspenseful. Along with her insights into Jewish extremist groups, Joan Leegant captures so many universal struggles and human foibles, with such clarity and present-day familiarity, that I found myself nodding in agreement at almost every page. The characters and their diverse stories build slowly like the heat of the desert until their horrifying, tragic and thought-provoking conclusion.

From the start Wherever You Go is a difficult book to put down unless it is to savor Leegant's writing. One example of many:

"But the real God was here, in this place, and Aaron knew it. He felt the hand of the Almighty Avenger guiding him, touching him on his very shoulder, looking down at him from this cracked ceiling in this miserable outpost on the edge of the scorpion desert where a hundred battles had been fought and where so much blood had soaked into the earth that even the mountains had turned red."

Wherever You Go takes its readers on a literary journey that provides a suspenseful and heightened awareness of the complexities of many of today's problems, a journey that its readers will look back on for a long, long time.

fantastic book, July 6, 2010. Five stars.

By Linda Stanger

This is a fantastic book. Once again, Joan Leegant sucks you in with her wonderful characters, complex, interesting and growing. She tackles the complicated topics in a way that is uniquely thoughtful. The world would be a better place if we could all contemplate such issues in this deep and personal manner.

“Captured the intricacies of the ideological positions,” July 6, 2010. Five stars.

By Regina

I bought the book yesterday and I could not stop reading; the story is very compelling, the small and the big story are very nicely interwoven. The author got the intricacies of the ideological positions so right, and the rhythm is great. This is a wonderful read and I will recommend to others. Regina

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