Jewish Girls Gone Wild: A Memoir of Skokie, Scottsdale & the Seventies

In 1973, Linda Pressman's Holocaust Survivor parents pack up their family of seven daughters and move cross country, from idyllic Skokie, Illinois, to the wild west - Scottsdale, Arizona - in a time of horse trailers, feed stores, and a church on every corner. A Jewish family plunked down in an alien world, her father transforms quickly into a Polish cowboy, the proud owner of a produce market, and her mother into a real estate agent trying to change the world one house at a time. In a coming-of-age story that is funny, tragic, and universal in its scope, the author recreates the 1970s in a story that proves that families can fall apart and put themselves together again. With one foot in Skokie and one in Scottsdale, Pressman creates a world of teenage angst, silent crushes from afar, and an eternal pull towards home, wherever that is.

"Linda Pressman brings her humor and keen eye for detail to this 1970s coming-of-age story set in Arizona. It's a tale about finding your place in an ever-changing world, something all of us can relate to." - Windy Lynn Harris, author of Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Work Published

"I adore [Pressman's] wit, [her] turns of phrase, and [her] observational humor.... There were so many individual sentences, paragraphs, and whole sections in here that I just loved - descriptions that perfectly brought back to life a moment from my own 70s youth that I'd long forgotten; character portrayals that nailed a person in a few sentences; dialogue that's truly authentic; and just so much cringe of coming of age. I'm wheeling out the highest of praise here..." - Theo Nestor, author of Writing is My Drink, and How to Sleep Alone in a King-Sized Bed

"The road from Skokie to Scottsdale is filled with love, life lessons and so many sisters. Linda Pressman perfectly captures what it's like to be an outsider in a new town, in a story only she can tell. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll plotz -- in all the best ways."
- Amy Silverman, author of My Heart Can't Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love and Down Syndrome