Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0813365961, Hardcover)

She grew up in an upper-middle-class Protestant family in New England. She can trace her father's family back to the Mayflower. Yet, "Judaism was to be my bashert, my destiny," claims Linda Shires-wife, mother, professor, and author. For almost twenty years, she lived the life of a Jewish wife, passing as a Jew when it was most important to her Jewish husband and his family. When she wanted to be, she was Christian. But after years of questioning, raising her husband's three children as Jews, and finally trying to ground her child in one religious tradition, Shires discovered her own. Coming Home tells the story of why Shires traded a central cultural position-WASP Debutante-for a position at the margins: a Jew-by-Choice. She became committed to a life of religious rebirth and observance. Her book is a quietly passionate and spiritual one, leading the reader from the privileged halls of Princeton to the Holocaust camps of Germany and back again. This richly felt story of conversion to Judaism expands the reader's idea of what constitutes a spiritual journey and a religious practice.