Excerpt from Odessa by Gabrielle Sher, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1

Frieda

Frieda was underwater. Her muscles contracted, shocked from the cold, and she was reminded suddenly of giving birth to her children: the way her own body had been a stranger

to her, knowing things she had never learned, moving without her command. She opened her lips and exhaled, forcing her muscles to relax. The pain turned to pleasure. Miriam's warm hand pressed gently on the top of her head and she opened her eyes, seeing her own pale hands illuminated by thin veins of light in the dark water. Frieda turned her hands over, the lines on her palms like tree roots, and began to pray, her chest aching from holding her breath. "Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech haolam shehecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and allowed us to reach this day." She could hear her own voice in her head.

Two warm hands held on to hers and lifted her up. She always loved this moment, the first breath after the immersion.

The thought of drowning filled her with gratitude. Thank you, she thought. Thank you for this air, thank you for these lungs. She grasped the grass in her fists and pulled her body up onto the bank, rolling onto her back and letting her legs drift in the spring.

This was her favorite spot in the world — half of her body in the water of the mikvah, half on land. Above her the sky was split into pale blue and rich red autumn trees. The spring had one bank on grassy fields and one bank in the shadowed forest, and Frieda always thought of the ritual bath like a living thing, a creature with arms and legs and a foot in each world. It was far enough away from the city that she felt safe enough to close her eyes and rest.

The sun warmed her face and her veins were illuminated like branches behind her closed eyelids, bright orange and yellow like they were on fire. But she could feel the shadows from the forest on her cold legs like they were reaching out to her, the scent of undergrowth and fallen leaves like the sweet rotting of a tooth. Frieda took a deep breath. She loved it. The decay was its own blooming thing.

She heard Miriam's steady steps in the grass and felt a warm dry cloth draped over her body.

"I did not tell my husband we were coming today," Frieda said, her eyes still closed. "He does not know where I am."

It was the first time she had gone somewhere without telling him, but she knew if she had asked, he would have said no and she did not want to worry him. The secret attached itself to her like a tick. She could feel its tiny fangs lodged in her skin and its small body slowly ballooning with her blood. She could not ignore it.

"Husbands can only handle so much truth," Miriam said. "Mine never asks where I go. If I told him he would not believe me. I suppose that is the beauty of it."

Frieda opened her eyes. Miriam sat down beside her. Her profile was silhouetted against the sun, and Frieda thought she looked like some ancient stone statue. The statue turned slowly toward her. "We are here to pray," Miriam said. "You should not feel guilt for that." Miriam lay down next to her.

"Do you feel guilt?" Frieda asked. "For what you do? For where you go? For the lies?"

"Guilt is useless to me," Miriam answered.

Their hair was dripping wet, and they waited with their faces in the sun and their legs in the shadow until most of the moisture in their hair had fed the grass beneath them.

Somewhere inside her, Frieda felt a gentle tugging trying to pull her toward home, a loose strand of her dress she imagined her husband pulling, pulling, the thread dragging across the open grass, across the jagged cobblestones of the shtetl at the dark edges of the city, through a crack under the door with four locks, to Morde-chai's broad callused hands. She knew the longer she lay there the more her dress would unravel until there was nothing left at all.

Excerpted from Odessa by Gabrielle Sher. Copyright © 2026 by Gabrielle Sher. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.