Susan (Levin) Rosenbluth was raised in Ventnor and graduated from ACHS in 1964. She’s the author of a new novel, Blurred Vision, that explores why some of the most idealistic and accomplished young people seem especially drawn to these destructive groups that demand all-consuming passion for the strangest of doctrines.
On Friday, October 16, at 10:30a, the Board of Jewish Education will feature Rosenbluth at its Beyond the Bookshelf brunch, hosted by Ventnor’s Shirat Hayam and coordinated through Jewish Family Service and Hadassah.
Advance registration by Oct 9 required to attend.
info@JewishByTheShore.org
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“Blurred Vision” is a captivating psychological thriller with vivid characters and a gripping story line that focuses on a serious — and underreported — problem affecting the Jewish community: the overrepresentation of Jews in some of the most dangerous cults, spiritual communities that offer a total sense of belonging — along with equally total enthrallment — and demand all-consuming passion for the strangest of doctrines.
Throughout history, cults have captivated the public imagination.
Set in Atlantic City in 1987, the novel deals with the havoc wreaked by one such group when a young woman, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, is lured into joining.
The ramifications pit an African American police detective and his Jewish partner, haunted by the death of a child he couldn’t save, against a teenage runaway from the cult and its violent messianic leader, who will stop at nothing to reclaim the boy—even murder.
Grounded in procedural realism, Blurred Vision is a tense psychological thriller about justice perverted, faith abused, and the devastating cost of trauma to the survivors. At its heart, however, it’s also a story about the blessings of families forged by love rather than blood, resilience, and unlikely human connections.
The Jewish Book Council called it “impossible to put down and impossible to forget.
The book will go far to improve relations between the African American and Jewish communities as well as between Christians and Jews.”
Now an award-winning journalist and editor of The Jewish Voice and Opinion, Rosenbluth began her career at the age of 11 with the now-defunct Ventnor-based Downbeach Crier.
Blurred Vision is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and wherever books are sold.
