Strange Land by Alexis Diamond

Set in Montreal’s Jewish neighbourhood on the Main (Saint Lawrence Blvd.) in 1942, during the Conscription crisis, STRANGE LAND is about how the three women of a struggling Jewish immigrant family attempt to forge a place in the New World after the death of the pater familias, each in her own way, only to be thwarted by conflicting aims and the narratives of identity imported from the Old World. At a time of war, rampant paranoia and virulent prejudice, Dinah risks everything to pull out hatred by its roots and rewrite the story of the New World.

Keywords: Montreal, Jewish, immigrant, Canadian history, WWII, feminist, identity, prejudice