My Mother Was a Bag Lady

The heartbreaking true story of a bag lady and her daughter'A revelation of salty poetry and raw life, worked out in her radiant voice' Andrea Ashworth'Sweet and sad reflections on a provocatively unusual mother-and-daughter relationship' Good Housekeeping'Brilliance ... dense, rich and associative' GuardianWhen Dora and her eight-year-old daughter Josiane are arrested in France they are unable to produce on demand a one-franc coin, legal proof that they are not vagrants. To the detective holding their identity papers, the solution is simple. Penniless, unwanted, itinerant and Jewish, they must be shipped back to the Promised Land.But this fresh start in Israel comes at a price. Dora's hostile neighbours are soon persecuting her openly for her foreignness and eccentricity. As she tries to make their tiny asbestos hut a home, their few possessions begin to disappear. Worse are the cat-calls in the street and the constant threat of physical violence.Ostracised from their community,Dora and her daughter face the world together. But soon Josiane must come to terms with the truth about her mother, and her escalating mental illness.