Jewish Girls Gone Wild: A Memoir of Skokie, Scottsdale & the Seventies

In 1973, Linda Pressman’s Holocaust Survivor parents pack up their family of seven daughters and move cross country, from idyllic Skokie, Illinois, to the wild west – Scottsdale, Arizona – in a time of horse trailers, feed stores, and a church on every corner. A Jewish family plunked down in an alien world, her father transforms quickly into a Polish cowboy, the proud owner of a produce market, and her mother into a real estate agent trying to change the world one house at a time. In a coming-of-age story that is funny, tragic, and universal in its scope, the author recreates the 1970s in a story that proves that families can fall apart and put themselves together again. With one foot in Skokie and one in Scottsdale, Pressman creates a world of teenage angst, silent crushes from afar, and an eternal pull towards home, wherever that is.“Linda Pressman brings her humor and keen eye for detail to this 1970s coming-of-age story set in Arizona. It’s a tale about finding your place in an ever-changing world, something all of us can relate to.” – Windy Lynn Harris, author ofWriting & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Work Published“I adore [Pressman’s] wit, [her] turns of phrase, and [her] observational humor…. There were so many individual sentences, paragraphs, and whole sections in here that I just loved – descriptions that perfectly brought back to life a moment from my own 70s youth that I’d long forgotten; character portrayals that nailed a person in a few sentences; dialogue that’s truly authentic; and just so much cringe of coming of age. I’m wheeling out the highest of praise here…” – Theo Nestor, author ofWriting is My Drink, andHow to Sleep Alone in a King-Sized Bed“The road from Skokie to Scottsdale is filled with love, life lessons and so many sisters. Linda Pressman perfectly captures what it's like to be an outsider in a new town, in a story only she can tell. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll plotz -- in all the best ways.”– Amy Silverman, author ofMy Heart Can't