Meryl Ain’s articles and essays have appeared in Huffington Post, MariaShriver.com, The Jewish Week, The New York Times, Newsday, and other publications. In 2014, she co-authored the award-winning book, The Living Memories Project: Legacies That Last, and in 2016, wrote a companion workbook, My Living Memories Project Journal.  She is both a student and teacher of history, as well as an administrator, and researcher. She holds a BA from Queens College, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an Ed.D. from Hofstra University. She lives in New York with her husband, Stewart. They have three married sons and six grandchildren. This is her first novel.

For fans of Hilma Wolitzer and Jhumpa Lahiri comes a collection of short stories about a mother and daughter as they navigate their changing roles through tumultuous times.

Following a Jewish family from before World War II to the not-too-distant future, this collection of loosely linked short stories explores the experiences of Marjorie, a baby boomer; her mother, Alice; and the friends and family that make up their community over the decades. As they each pursue higher education and choose career paths, both mother and daughter encounter challenges as they make choices within a changing society—from in-law problems to illness to antisemitism and beyond.

Sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, Remember to Eat takes on themes including patriarchy, technology, the changing role of women, the challenges of raising children, the COVID-19 pandemic, complex family relationships, and what it means to be a Jew with empathy and insight. Ultimately, the twenty-two stories contained in these pages offer not only an intimate journey into these women’s lives but also an illuminating portrait of the times in which they live.

In this eagerly anticipated sequel to Meryl Ain’s award-winning post-Holocaust novel The Takeaway Men, we follow Bronka and JoJo Lubinski as they find themselves on the cusp of momentous change for women in the late 1960s. With the United States in the grip of political and social upheaval, the twins and a number of their peers, including a Catholic priest and the son of a Nazi, struggle with their family’s ancestry and how much influence it has on their lives. Meanwhile, both young women seek to define their roles as women, and as individuals.

Enlightening and evocative, Shadows We Carry explores the experience of navigating deeply held family secrets and bloodlines, confusing religious identities, and the scars of World War II in the wake of revolutionary societal changes.

With the cloud of the Holocaust still looming over them, twin sisters Bronka and Johanna Lubinski and their parents arrive in the US from a Displaced Persons Camp. In the years after World War II, they experience the difficulties of adjusting to American culture as well as the burgeoning fear of the Cold War. Years later, the discovery of a former Nazi hiding in their community brings the Holocaust out of the shadows. As the girls get older, they start to wonder about their parents’ pasts, and they begin to demand answers. But it soon becomes clear that those memories will be more difficult and painful to uncover than they could have anticipated. Poignant and haunting, The Takeaway Men explores the impact of immigration, identity, prejudice, secrets, and lies on parents and children in mid-twentieth-century America.