Recipient of the Theodore Hoepfner Fiction Award and past writer-in-residence at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Jerusalem Art Colony, Perle Besserman’s fiction includes the novels Pilgrimage (Houghton Mifflin), Kabuki Boy (Aqueous Books) and Widow Zion (Pinyon Publishing), and the short story collection Yeshiva Girl (Homebound Publishing). Besserman’s creative non-fiction includes books on mysticism and spirituality, such as The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism (Shambhala/Random House), Teachings of the Jewish Mystics (Shambhala/Random House), Grassroots Zen (with Manfred Steger, Tuttle), A New Kabbalah for Women (Palgrave Macmillan), A New Zen for Women (Palgrave Macmillan), and most recently, with Manfred Steger, Grassroots Zen: Community and Practice in the 21st-Century (Monkfish Book Publishing). Her most recent novel is The Kabbalah Master (Monkfish Book Publishing). Her books have been recorded and translated into over fourteen languages.
I’d had no contact with my ex-husband Erwin for years, nor was I curious to find out what he was up to. But when an email from his wife arrived announcing his death, I was sent scrabbling around in my file cabinet in search of a stray newspaper clipping or photo to console her…
