08/01/2025 12:02:43 PM
A Bittersweet Novel of Israel
By Robin Jacobson
Israeli author Lihi Lapid’s suspenseful bestseller, On Her Own, is available now in an English translation by Sondra Silverston. The novel opens with a terrified eighteen-year-old, Nina, cowering in the stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment building. She has just escaped from her abusive boyfriend, a gangster who is searching for her, intent on ensuring that Nina remains silent about a violent crime she witnessed. From this gritty beginning, the novel blossoms into a warm-hearted story of parents and children, loss, and love.
Nina and Irina
Nina and her hardworking, single mother, Irina, are emigrants from Ukraine. They live in a desert town in southern Israel, near Be'er Sheva. Nina, usually a conscientious student, skips her matriculation exams to run off with the unsavory David Shmueli, nicknamed Johnny, who heads a local crime syndicate.
Johnny showers Nina with expensive gifts and promises her a more glamorous life than she and Irina have been able to live, supported by Irina’s meager income as a cleaning woman. Dazzled by Johnny, Nina ignores Irina’s warnings about him. But within two weeks of running away with Johnny, Nina comes to bitterly regret her rash decision. She is afraid to return home or even to contact her mother for fear that Johnny will trace her whereabouts. Meanwhile, Irina is frantic about her missing daughter.
Carmela and Itamar
Carmela, a lonely widow with dementia, discovers Nina in the stairwell of her apartment building. Confused, Carmela mistakes Nina for her granddaughter, Dana, whom she had long hoped would visit from the United States. Traumatized, bruised, and exhausted, Nina readily agrees to come upstairs to Carmela’s apartment.
As she heals, Nina lets Carmela think she is Dana so that she can continue to shelter in the apartment. At the same time, Nina has become fond of Carmela and is genuinely concerned about her welfare. An appealing young man whose mother, Hagit, runs the neighborhood minimarket, helps with Carmela. Hagit, however, becomes suspicious that “Dana” is an impostor trying to rob the vulnerable Carmela.
Carmela is overwhelmed by loss – the death of her elder son who was killed while serving in the military many years back, the more recent death of her husband, and her younger son Itamar’s move to the United States. Initially, Itamar planned to live in the United States for only a year to manage the merger of his start-up with an American company, but he and his family have now been gone for six years.
Itamar is likewise overwhelmed, but by conflicting feelings. Living in the United States has brought him material success and some respite from his parents’ grief about his brother. But since his father’s death, he feels increasingly guilty about leaving his mother alone. He is also homesick for Israel and worried that his children are becoming more American than Israeli.
Lihi Lapid
Lihi Lapid is a photojournalist, newspaper columnist, and an advocate for Israelis with disabilities. She is the wife of former Prime Minister Yair Lapid. She wrote On Her Own, her third novel, for an Israeli audience, but hopes that American readers will gain a deeper understanding of both the joys and challenges of being Israeli.
As to the challenges, Lapid’s characters illuminate the struggles of immigrants to Israel, the difficulties faced by emigrants from Israel and the families they leave behind, and the dark shadow of loss that hovers over the country. The novel’s climactic scene occurs on Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day, a day which underscores the sacrifices Israelis have borne since the state’s founding.
