The Valley of the Apple Orchards (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781790416714)

Israel in the 1950's. Miriam - a young immigrant, struggles to keep pace with the ongoing lives of veteran Israelis. Her parents fled Poland as soon as WWII broke out. Her mother was an intellectual and her father a political activist. Miriam clings to their ideas while trying to find her new self in a new land. She is the focus of attention of her male acquaintances, and while rejecting each of them, is painfully harboring her true feelings to the man she loves.

Miriam does not put her past behind her. Living in Israel, a young and not yet developed state, where conditions are rough, stirs up continual nostalgia for her former life, and - in a way, she idealizes her past sufferings. She is ignorant about both Jewish tradition, and Zionist ideology.

Now Miriam has to find a way to relate to the people she meets; local Israelis who are still struggling after the War of Independence, and new immigrants who survived the Holocaust and are forever struggling with the horrors of it, so she can find a way to turn this new country into her home.