"Edward Cohen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt, a thousand miles from the northern centers of Jewish culture."--BOOK JACKET. "His grandfather Moise had left Romania and all his family for a very different world, the Deep South. Peddling on foot from farm to farm, sleeping in haylofts, he was the first Jew many Mississippians had ever seen."--BOOK JACKET.

"In the 1950s, insulated by the extended family, Edward believed the world was populated totally by Jews - until the first day of school when he had the disquieting realization that he was the only Jew in his class. At times he felt southern, almost, but his sense of being an outsider slowly crystallized, as he listened to daily Christian school prayers and tried to explain his annual absences to classmates who had never heard of Rosh Hashanah.

At Christmas his parents' house was the only one without lights. In the seventh grade, he was the only child not invited to dance class."--BOOK JACKET. "Cohen recounts how he left Mississippi for college to seek his own tribe. Instead, he found that among northern Jews he was again an outsider, marked by his southernness. They knew holidays like Simchas Torah; he knew Confederate Memorial Day."--BOOK JACKET.

"He tells a story of displacement, of living on the margin of two already marginal groups, and of coming to terms with his dual loyalties, to region and religion."--BOOK JACKET.