The ladies auxiliary - Tova Mirvis

'No one knows why Orthodox Jews settled in Memphis, but we saw our city as the Jerusalem of the South, our families part of a chain of Jewish Memphians that would extend into the future forever, as long and as far away as God in Heaven. When things didn't happen that way, it was the last thing we had expected.'This is the voice of the Ladies Auxiliary, the organization at the heart of this close-knit community, and it is the ladies' voices which tell of how a carefully structured world begins to unravel with the arrival in its midst of Batsheva, young, beautiful, a convert and a widow with a small child.The ladies of the Auxiliary pride themselves on their modesty, domesticity and the strictness of their observance. How can you lay claim to any of these virtues if you have such a thing as a tattoo? And why does Batsheva show no interest in marrying again? And what sort of an influence is she having on their teenage girls who seem to tell her much more than they will tell their own mothers? And, most worrying of all, is it really right that she is spending so much time with Yosef, son of the rabbi, the great hope for the future?The Ladies' Auxiliary is an enchanting novel about what happens when a community cannot see beyond the walls it has built against the outside world. Batsheva is a character of unforgettable courage and charm, whose heartbreaking plight resonates with anyone who has ever felt - or resisted - the deadening pressure to conform.