In her 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, Deborah Feldman chronicled her upbringing in the insular, fundamentalist Satmar sect of Orthodox Judaism and her flight from its practices with her young son. When she left her Brooklyn, N.Y., community behind at age 23, Feldman had a new life ahead of her--and very little idea how it would look or who she would be within it. In Exodus, she explores where the first few years of that journey have taken her, and the perspective she has acquired since it began.
While she no longer considers herself Orthodox--and some responses to her first book suggest that this disassociation is reciprocated--Feldman continues to identify as Jewish. However, in order to move forward, she decides she must also move backward. Much of Exodus tracks her travels through Europe as she follows the path of her grandmother, a survivor of the concentration camps, and grapples with the ways in which she herself could be called a survivor.
Exodus is a companion piece to Unorthodox, and while it's not necessary to read both memoirs in chronological order, those who have read one will likely want to read the other. Exodus has the feel of a coming-of-age story, tracing the protagonist's steps toward self-discovery. It meanders at times and feels somewhat unresolved in the end, leaving the reader with a sense that Feldman is still at the beginning of her self-reformation, still searching and sorting out. She's not yet 30, so that seems right. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness