Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Feldman spent her first 20-odd years growing up in the ultraorthodox Satmar community. As the daughter of a mother who left to live as a lesbian, Feldman already was marked as different. Raised by her grandparents, she tried to go along to get along, but after marrying, at age 17, she knew a Hasidic life was not the one she wanted to live. There's no doubt that Feldman's evolution as well as her look inside a closed community make for fascinating reading. But this also seems to be a book written to settle scores, especially with the author's inlaws. Moreover, after all the buildup to her leaving, Feldman leaves many questions unanswered, primarily, how did she get custody of her son, the very thing she said the community would not allow? The final photo of her in jeans, smoking a cigarette, doesn't convey the image of the liberated woman she's trying for, but her storyteller's sense and a keen eye for details give readers a you-are-there sense of what it is like to be different when everyone else is the same.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist

Born into the insular and exclusionary Hasidic community of Satmar in Brooklyn to a mentally disabled father and a mother who fled the sect, Feldman, as she recounts in this nicely written memoir, seemed doomed to be an outsider from the start. Raised by devout grandparents who forbade her to read in English, the ever-curious child craved books outside the synagogue teaching. Feldman's spark of rebellion started with sneaking off to the library and hiding paperback novels under her bed. Her boldest childhood revolution: she buys an English translation of the Talmud, which would otherwise be kept from her, so that she might understand the prayers and stories that are the fabric of her existence. At 17, hoping to be free of the scrutiny and gossip of her circle, she enters into an arranged marriage with a man she meets once before the wedding. Instead, having received no sex education from a culture that promotes procreation and repression simultaneously, she and her husband are unable to consummate the relationship for a year. The absence of a sex life and failure to produce a child dominate her life, with her family and in-laws supplying constant pressure. She starts to experience panic attacks and the stirrings of her final break with being Hasidic. It's when she finally does get pregnant and wants something more for her child that the full force of her uprising takes hold and she plots her escape. Feldman, who now attends Sarah Lawrence College, offers this engaging and at times gripping insight into Brooklyn's Hasidic community. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.