Neighbor News
Author Reading: Skating with the Statue of Liberty
Susan Meyer's novel follows a French Jewish war refugee in the United States as he negotiates a conflicted relationship to this new country.
Susan Lynn Meyer’s debut novel for young readers, Black Radishes, also celebrated on its release at Wellesley’s French House, was inspired by her father’s experiences as a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied France. Black Radishes was awarded a Sydney Taylor silver medal and was named a Massachusetts Book Award finalist and a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year.
Meyer’s Skating with the Statue of Liberty picks up Gustave’s story when he arrives as a French Jewish war refugee in the United States in 1942 and negotiates a conflicted relationship to this new country. It has saved his life and the lives of members of his family—but it is not quite the place of equality and justice that he had expected it to be.
Meyer focuses of Victorian and American literature, and is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and history. She also enjoys writing fiction for children and has published two picture books in addition to Black Radishes.
