The Book of Separation: A Memoir

The memoir of a woman leaving behind her faith and her marriage to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a world unknown to her.

Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family.

But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Mirvis decides to leave her marriage and her religious world and forge a new way of life. In order to do so, she must learn to silence her fears and the voices telling her who she is supposed to be.

Brave and inspiring, The Book of Separation illuminates universal themes of faith, doubt, love, and change, and explores what it means to heed your inner compass at long last.