Circling Eden

by Carol Magun

Weeks before she's set to depart for her junior year in Paris, Rebecca Harrison announces her intention to spend the year in Jerusalem instead. What appears to be capriciousness, however, is really a clear-eyed recognition of discontent with the neatly hedged path her life has followed until now. Once in Israel, Rebecca finds her yearning for acceptance thwarted at every turn. The society she had vaguely imagined as the embodiment of everything missing from her own experience seems to offer no place of entry for a single woman, an amerika'it, an assimilated Jew. But the barriers she encounters, the emotional dead-ends that confront her in relationship after relationship, turn out to be signposts on a frantic journey of self-discovery. Creating a dual perspective of the "insider" looking back on what she feels to be the "outsider", Rebecca's story proceeds with ruthless honesty, avoiding both romanticism and despair. Circling Eden is a poignant rendering of how it feels to be a woman in