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Leaving Long Island ...and Other Departures Paperback – April 21, 2012

by Fern Kupfer (Author)
4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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'Leaving Long Island' is the story of a woman whose life experience includes the loss of a child, the explosive end of a long marriage, and the discovery of a genetic inheritance endemic to the Ashkenazi Jewish population. This second-half-of-life memoir is a compelling narrative of both pain and happy second chances. Fern Kupfer’s work has appeared in Newsweek, Redbook, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, The Women’s Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Parents and Cosmopolitan magazines. She recently retired from Iowa State University where she taught creative writing. For more than a decade, her popular column “Mothering “ and “A Certain Age” appeared regularly in the Long Island newspaper, Newsday. She was the recipient for the Myrtle Wreath Award by the Nassau County Hadassah, the largest women’s philanthropy in the nation.
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  1. Reading age
    1 year and up
  2. Print length
    260 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Dimensions
    5.98 x 0.65 x 9.02 inches
  5. Publication date
    April 21, 2012
  6. ISBN-10
    1105535878
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1105535871
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lulu.com; First Edition (April 21, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1105535878
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1105535871
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.98 x 0.65 x 9.02 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

About the author

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Fern Kupfer

Fern Kupfer

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Fern Kupfer is a memoirist, columnist, novelist and popular speaker. Her new book, Leaving Long Island (Culicidae Press, 2012) is a memoir about being a woman of a certain age and surviving the loss of a child, the explosive end of a long marriage, and the discovery of a genetic inheritance (the BRCA 1 gene) endemic to the Ashkenazi Jewish population. It is a second half of life story, depicting an ordinary life of pain and happy second chances. A great women's book club selection!

Fern Kupfer's work has appeared in Newsweek, Newsday, Redbook, Family Circle, American Way, Woman's Day, The Women's Review of Books, Writer's Digest, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Parents magazine, Moment, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan and The Des Moines Register; her essays have been widely anthologized in college texts and popular collections including Nice Jewish Girls (Plume/Penguin), The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives and Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers on Fairytales(Anchor/Doubleday)

Her columns "Mothering " and "A Certain Age" appeared every three weeks in Newsday, Long Island's newspaper, from 1993 - 2005.

Her novels' include

Surviving the Seasons (Delacorte)

No Regrets (Viking)

Love Lies (Simon and Schuster).

A memoir, the best selling Before and After Zachariah, a story about family life with a severely disabled child is in its third edition (Academy Chicago). All of her books have been published internationally. Surviving the Seasons was nominated for the Jewish Book Award.

Fern Kupfer has been a public speaker for family advocacy and special needs children, lecturing all over the United States at conferences, hospitals and schools. She has appeared on Good Morning America and has been interviewed by Oprah Winfry.

Until her retirement from the creative writing program at Iowa State in 2011, she was a tenured professor, teaching creative writing and magazine writing at Iowa State University.

She is married to the Lebanese-American writer Joseph Geha. Their family combines step-children and grandchildren, middle-easterners, mid-westerners, gentiles and Jews. They live in the middle of the country - Iowa - where the corn is high, the political caucus begins, families grow hearty and the people are almost always nice.

Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
30 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Orange Cat
5.0 out of 5 stars Ultimately, A Story About Resilience
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2013
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Veering away from a memoir model that makes you wonder if there is indeed a World Pity Prize for Writer Most Damaged by Life, Kupfer has produced a book that draws you in and holds you without resorting to self-manufactured dysfunction. She is a woman who has lived a life, and if you live a life you will have a story to tell, some happier than others. Luckily for us, Kupfer is a wonderful storyteller, expertly combining humor and pathos.

Despite giving birth to a severely disabled child who dies young, weathering her first husband's infidelities until he finally leaves her for a younger woman, and facing decisions that surround the almost certainty that she will develop breast cancer, Kupfer doesn't spend much time feeling sorry for herself and this is one of book's strong points. Instead her story is about resilience and the buoyancy of the human spirit--despite all that happens to her, she finds love, has loving relationships with her surviving child and stepdaughters, and maintains life-long friendships. Eminently readable, she details her life--it's joys and sorrows--in tightly written, beautiful prose that is rarely maudlin. The chapter about her son is one of the most moving I've read in a long time. This book is not overwritten and its stories are not over-analyzed or over-dramatized--they stand on their own emotional merit. Along with Jeanette Walls "The Glass Castle" and Robert Goolrick's "The End of the World as We Know It," I highly recommend "Leaving Long Island."

(Disclosure: I was a long-ago student of Kupfer's and so was glad a friend still in Iowa let me know the book was available. She was a great prof, too. Maybe she'll even get a kick out of wondering who this insightful, erudite former student with impeccable taste might be.)
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Michael Rakosi
5.0 out of 5 stars The Light at the end of tunnel is not nescessarily a train coming towards you"
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2012
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To capture an exquisite portrayal of a life filled with immense tragedies and make them easily palatable to all of us (there is no wincing), and in the same moment make it universal, is a major accomplishment.

Fern Kupfer, Long Island Jewish bred, a wonderful writer, transplanted into Field of Dreams Iowa as a professor, does all of that and more. There are people who we all know who take the air out of a room by entering. Fern takes some of life's greatest tragedies, like the loss of a child or betrayal in a "trusting" marriage and brings hope, joy, and actual humor, to each. Fern treats the specter of near-certain (genetic) breast cancer with the investigative journalistic flair worthy of Woodward and Bernstein. She is a writer and obviously a person filled with a natural ebullience, takes the tiniest good out of devastating situations that promise future horrible consequence, and gives hope. Fern gives us a birds eye view into the way to handle catastrophies, while simultaneously holding a job, finding a new mate, all the while enjoying the present and savoring the future.

With her childhood best friend Barbara, we have a Sancho Panza who gives Fern a constant, up to the minute, reality-check of big city views on any and all life altering events. Their bantering humor provides a Nadal-Frederer volleying of ideas that is delicious.

A great read, you won't put down, as you spend your time with a writer of consequence, making a life altering decision.
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1972
5.0 out of 5 stars She has the uncanny ability to make you feel like her best friend through shared experiences
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2014
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Fern Kupfer is "THE BEST" i read No Regrets many moons ago when my 2 daughters were young. So many elements of that book struck a chord, I've reread it three times! I just finished reading "Leaving Long Island". I grew up there, my husband born in the bronx and moved to L. I. when he was 12 and so the story goes. She has the uncanny ability to make you feel like her best friend through shared experiences, humor, and sadness. I read this book while playing ball with my dog over two days. So grab a lawn chair a bottle of water or whatever, and a ball for your dog. While the sun shines down on you prepare yourself for a highly enjoyable experience with your best friend Fern.
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Bonney R
5.0 out of 5 stars A FASCINATING MEMOIR OF PAIN AND JOY
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2013
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Fern Kupfer, years before Angelina Jolies's announcement, discovers she, too, carries the BRCA1 gene, and confronts whether or not to have preventive mastectomies. She's watched her mother die of breast cancer, so knows what carrying the gene entails if she doesn't have the double mastectomy. It is an authentic journey covering her adult life, when she leave Long Island to live and work in the Berkshires. She takes us through her first marriage,the births of her children, and the pain of having a beautiful child whose consciousness dissolves while the marriage, too, slowly dissolves. Her second marriage is to a marvel of a man who supports her decisions and loves her unconditionally. Lucky woman, who tells her tale with wit, humor, and utter honesty. She and Jolie have much in common.
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Marie
5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, poignant, and insightful
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2013
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Loved, loved, loved this book...and not because it's all happy and lightness, although there's bursts of humor throughout as well. As a breast cancer survivor, I found many things I could relate to. As a wife, I appreciated Fern's straightforward thoughts about marriage and husbands. As a person, Fern's insights on dealing with life's passages were comforting to me. And as a woman approaching 60, I found affirmation that this age is just the right age for me.

Truly exemplifies that "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and I would add "makes you better as well".
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lynnpamela
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!!!
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2012
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I was a big fan of the author years ago when she wrote a regular column about parenting and then growing older in Newsday when I was raising my children, and also read her previous books. I always found her writing both moving and insightful and actually clipped some of them out over the years they were so heartwarming. This book not only did not disappoint but I felt like I was catching up with an old friend. It is a must read and I couldn't recommend it more highly.
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Robert Kaufman
5.0 out of 5 stars I am a guy and loved "Leaving Long Island"
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2012
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I am a guy. I do not have a feminine side. I do have a love for great writing. Leaving Long Island is great writing. I started reading the prolog and was drawn into an unforgettable experience. It was a privilege to read it. It made me laugh and cry and care. That is a lot to ask of a book.
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