2024 Best Book Awards Winner in Fiction: Literary
“This is a wonderfully wise book . . . A sagacious and graceful modern-day retelling of a biblical love story.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Blasberg’s writing skillfully navigates the complexities of desire and ambition, building to an emotional crescendo that is well worth the wait. . . . Daughter of a Promise is a poignant exploration of identity, love, and the pursuit of one's dreams . . . ”
—Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review
“ . . . a powerful feminist novel set during a tumultuous year in New York.”
—Foreword Reviews
“A unique and inherently fascinating novel that will hold immense interest to fans of cultural heritage fiction, women's fiction, and coming of age stories, Daughter of a Promise showcases author Jeanne Blasberg’s impressive literary skills and whose distinctive style of narrative driven storytelling fully engages her reader's total attention from start to finish.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Daughter of a Promise is a gripping story of love and ambition set in the high stakes world of investment banking. Jeanne Blasberg tells a story that is both timeless and of the moment—and in Betsabé Ruiz, she has created a heroine worth rooting for.”
—Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year
“Daughter of a Promise a spirited and deep soul. Once more Blasberg trains her acute eye on the beauty, joy, and difficulty of familial love. Her latest novel is both timeless and thoroughly modern.”
—Ivy Pochoda, author of Sing Her Down and These Women
“Daughter of a Promise is a stunning reminder of the enduring nature of love and desire. With richly drawn characters, the novel is a beautiful coming-of-age tale that lays bare the complexities of life and the push to pursue one’s dreams. A must read.”
—Rachel Barenbaum, author of A Bend in the Stars and Atomic Anna
“I defy you to place the characters in this novel into any neat category based on ethnicity, gender, wealth, age, or professional status. In this retelling of an ancient story—with gleaming office towers and stately mansions as its backdrop—Blasberg stands current cultural tropes on their head and masterfully invites us to examine the only power that really matters, our human capacity to learn, grow, nurture, and forgive. Bets is a heroine for our times. I loved this book.”
—Katherine A. Sherbrooke, author of Leaving Coy’s Hill and The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly
“Biblical narratives speak truths of the human condition. Jeanne Blasberg has unearthed these ancient truths and allowed them to blossom into a modern milieu. The intrigue and the drama remain with all the emotion and turmoil that touches the reader’s soul. Jeanne Blasberg launches us into a journey of discovery in this beautifully written novel taken out of the pages of the Bible and given new life through the artistry of her magnificent storytelling.”
—Rabbi Elaine Zecher, Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel, Boston
“Jeanne Blasberg’s Daughter of a Promise is an engrossing literary novel that defines the start of an era—the COVID-19 pandemic—much as Jay McInerney characterized the downtown Manhattan scene in 1984 with Bright Lights, Big City and as Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker gave us a vision of the wild conduct of Wall Street traders in the 1980s. This is a novel worth savoring . . . and coming back to read again and again.”
—David Hirshberg, author of My Mother’s Son and Jacobo’s Rainbow
“Blasberg aces it again with her masterful handling of a Biblical tale transposed into our modern world with her captivating new novel. Daughter of a Promise is a rich and engaging coming-of-age tale of a young woman who gains her confidence slowly but surely as she casts off conventional wisdom and proffered advice and learns to listen to the deeper—and more timeless—voice that guides her. This is a novel that will remind you to be brave enough to listen to your own inner voice.”
—Deborah Goodrich Royce, award-winning author of Reef Road, Ruby Falls, and Finding Mrs. Ford
“Daughter of a Promise brilliantly captures the intense pulls of love, ambition, and friendship for a young woman starting out in the world. As Betsabé navigates her place in New York after college graduation, she learns truths we all need to know about the balance between duty to others and duty to self. A powerful and tender coming-of-age story.”
—Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea
“Jeanne Blasberg writes like a dream, and Daughter of a Promise feels like the lovely braiding of a real life rendered and the culmination of a prophecy. All of which to say it is nothing less than biblical in its ambition while it remains entirely grounded in the real. This is a book about love and money, and how both make the world go 'round. I loved every page.”
—Scott Chesire, author of High as the Horses’ Bridles
★ 2023-12-19
The story of David and Bathsheba is reprised in Blasberg’s novel charting the love affair between a young Cuban woman from Miami and her powerful corporate boss.
Betsabé Ruiz is a high achiever from Little Havana, Miami—she wins a scholarship to a private college in New York, then is picked for job training at a high-powered investment bank in the city. After a shaky start, she comes into her strengths and becomes the protege, then lover, of the widowed Robert David (known simply as “David”), a charismatic financial legend. She becomes pregnant; “Bets” is the first-person narrator, relating her experiences to the child in her womb. Those who know the David and Bathsheba story, in which the biblical couple’s first child dies as a punishment for their sin but the second, Solomon, becomes one of the great kings of Israel, will easily connect the dots. This is a wonderfully wise book. Blasberg is an accomplished writer, and in Betsabé Ruiz she has created an insightful and strong young woman. The author has a gift for imagery and metaphor, as seen when Bets reflects on David’s solicitousness, “as if he might be offering his hand to a novice gymnast crossing the balance beam,” a perfect evocation of the high-stress career that she is embarking on, not to mention a seduction that readers know is in the cards. David is the mentor, many years her senior, but, in the end, it is clearly Bets who is the real teacher; the book is, among other things, a testament to women’s deeper insights, like those of Bets’ wise grandmother, Yaya (“If Yaya was alive, she’d say doctors have no idea, that babies come when they are good and ready”). Of course, Bets and David are hardly the only characters—side plots abound with young people on the make in the Big Apple, caroming like bumper cars.
A sagacious and graceful modern-day retelling of a biblical love story.
