Odessa - by Gabrielle Sher (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave.

"A triumph."―Nat Cassidy, author of Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home

"Spellbinding. . . A tender and gutting showstopper."―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father's rules, and the path that's been laid out for her, she craves freedom, the edges of which she doesn't know. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.

Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned--but although she looks the same, she is not the girl she once was. Yetta senses there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the creature lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl―something that may be of her father's making, and a being that has plans of its own.

"Breathtaking."― Monika Kim, author of The Eyes are the Best Part

"Wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving."― Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie

Review Quotes

"A bold, gripping exploration of a dark era in human history. . . Sher looks at what it takes to survive against impossible odds, and what it truly means to be alive."--Book Browse

"A nightmarish gothic novel. . . The 1905 setting is drawn impeccably, as is the depiction of Jewish life and folklore. . . the novel's denouement is unexpected and uplifting."--The Historical Novel Society

"I love picking up a debut novel and immediately forgetting it's a debut. . . The golden era of genre-mixing has been upon us for a while, and Sher's work fits perfectly inside it. This is a unique historical horror novel in which religion, discrimination, grief, and monsters blend into a story in which parental love and death dance with righteous violence and magic. The result is a book that punches your soul. I look forward to reading whatever Sher does next."--Gabino Iglesias, Locus Magazine

"A com­pelling and intro­spec­tive Jew­ish goth­ic novel."
--Jewish Book Council

"In a stunning debut focused on grief and identity, Sher delivers an instant modern classic. . . Lyrical and haunting with a nearly palpable ache at its core, Odessa is a quiet horror, laying bare a comparison of real-life evils with supernatural ones. Its fear lingers long after the story is complete."
--Booklist, Starred Review

"With rich use of language and a deep exploration of horrors from both history and Jewish folklore, this story will engage readers who loved other blends of history and folklore, such as The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman, or historical horror with a sharp view to the terror in history, such as The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones."
--Library Journal, Starred Review

"Sher sets her spellbinding debut in 1905 Odessa, where pogroms have torn apart the Jewish community. . . Sher's straightforward prose packs a punch and she doesn't shy away from the realities of Jewish oppression, balancing the novel's more gruesome elements with the palpable love that bonds the community together. The result is a tender and gutting showstopper."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Odessa is a breathtaking debut novel. Sher's prose is quietly devastating and so beautiful that, like Yetta, I found myself split in half by the aching depths of a family's grief and their struggle to reconcile with loss."--Monika Kim, author of The Eyes Are the Best Part

"Odessa is a triumph. Gabrielle Sher has given us, at once, a classic monster tale, a heartbreakingly relevant historical drama, a pulse-poundingly contemporary descent into horror, a timeless parable about the porous boundaries between atrocity and self-defense, and above all, a powerful reclamation of agency. Count me in for whatever Sher writes next."--Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home

"I did not have 'lush Jewish gothic horror novel' on my 2026 bingo card, and now I can't imagine my life without it. Odessa is resplendent and unputdownable."--Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy

"Odessa is wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving. Gabrielle Sher's powerful tale of terrible wrong and terrifying consequences manages both to surprise and hit all the right chilling notes."--Laird Hunt, author of the National Book Award nominated Zorrie

"A bold investigation of the costs of violence and complex aftermath of possessive grief. Gabrielle Sher stitches together myth and legend across traditions and time in startling, memorable, and moving ways." --Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika

About the Author

Gabrielle Sher attended Hamilton College, where she earned the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for her novella Bowerbird. She received her MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her first novel, Odessa, originated as part of her doctoral dissertation titled "Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic." She currently lives and writes in New Jersey with her husband Jamie and their dog Bo.