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"Enjoyable contemporary drama"
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted April 30, 2004

Miriam Kaminsky is a phone psychic who works out of her house in the New York area. Her husband pharmacist Rory owns Mirror Pharmacy, which is suffering financial troubles. Her teenage daughter Cara is a high school senior. Miriam actually has powers and her readings are quite Read more...

"Even If You Don't Believe in Grandmother Tales!"
Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Courtesy Bookpleasures
Posted August 16, 2004

Even if you don't believe in "bube meishes," (Yiddish for grandmother tales), or psychics and mediums, you can't help enjoying Rochelle Jewel Shapiro's first delightful novel Miriam the Medium. Shapiro narrates a story of a phone psychic, Miriam Kaminsky, who inherited the gift of being able to communicate with the dead Read more...

Summary

MIRIAM THE MEDIUM is the story of a smart, funny, modern day Long Island woman with a gift that heals other lives, but causes rifts in her own. She works at home as a phone psychic to preserve her anonymity and protect herself from her colorful, demanding clients. Woven throughout are scenes from her past--her beloved old world Russian grandmother who inspired and taught her how to commune with spirits, her wanting-to-be-modern mother who feels Miriam's emerging gift is the worst thing that could ever happen to her and does everything in her power to stop it. But Miriam persists, growing up psychic, despite the trouble her gifts cause her, and happily marrying a young pharmacist, Rory, a scientist who nevertheless accepts her for who she is, and what she can do. Soon, however, sparks fly. Miriam's disapproving mother dies, leaving her still yearning for her mother's support, love and approval. Rory's got his own business, but he's getting buried under a mountain of bills, and his feelings about his wife's gift are beginning to change. While he desperately needs Miriam to up her readings to help their cash flow, Miriam's impromptu readings of his customers (and psychic suspicions about a shady staff member, Eddy) are turning customers away. Their once perfect marriage begins to fray. But Rory isn't the only family member at odds with Miriam. Miriam's daughter Cara grows up bathed in the surprises and pleasures of having a psychic mom. She's desperate to have her mother's gift, and when she can't, she looks for an identity of her own, finding it at sixteen with a hoodlum on a motorcycle. But when Cara runs away with the boy, all Miriam's psychic gifts will be called into question. Can she find her daughter and save her marriage? And can she make peace with her mother's spirit? MIRIAM THE MEDIUM is a book about finding your true identity, about family, and longing, and the way the past weaves through the present.