Feldman was born to an Orthodox family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her father was from a local family and her mother was from England. Her mother deserted the Orthodox community when Feldman was very young, for many reasons but also including the fact that Feldman's father was not a stable person. It is unclear what exactly but he had some mental deficiencies and most likely some mental health issues as well. Feldman was then raised by her grandparents and various aunts and uncles who did a lot of butting in. It was fascinating to hear some of the inner-workings of the community, such as Satmar actually comes from the town Santa Maria, where the founding rabbi originated from. Feldman is only a few years younger than me so to reflect that these were the experiences she was going through while I was living a very different American/Jewish lifestyle took me back a bit.
As tends to be the case in the Orthodox community, Feldman married quite young. She was very open about her thoughts and feelings about the wedding and initially was very excited. It might have been that she was very excited about the wedding and just really hadn't thought about the marriage piece of things. The marriage piece did not get off to a great start, there was some sexual problems that they had to seek help for.
The marriage also did not last long. Feldman, very slowly, started tasting more and more non-Orthodox life. I can only imagine that it was much more painful than was conveyed in the book to completely isolate herself from the family that she had been raised with as well as the father of her child, even if she wasn't herself particularly connected to him.
While I really enjoyed the story, as I said in the beginning, I wish that there was a bit of an epilogue to say where she now and what she's doing.
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