Pull up a chair and join the conversation at the JFriends Book Club at the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum Jewish Community Center. Whether you’re an avid reader who flies through books or someone who just loves thoughtful conversation and good company, this welcoming adult book club is the perfect place to connect.

Each gathering features lively discussion, fresh perspectives, and plenty of laughs as members dive into engaging stories together. Come discover new books, meet new friends, and enjoy an evening where community and conversation are always part of the story.

Author Jacqueline Friedland will join our discussion via Zoom, moderated by Elaine Nestel

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July's Selection: Counting Backwards

New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all--a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage, and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family's history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby detention center. There she meets Isobel Perez--a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter--but as she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel's health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. One that shockingly has ties to her own family.

Virginia, 1927. Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a different future--one separate from her exploitative foster family--unknowing of the ripples her small, country life will have on an entire nation.