Lore Segal (1928-2024), author of Other People's Houses and Shakespeare's Kitchen, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (all published by The New Press), among other works, was the recipient of a New Yorker Best Book of the Year Award, an O. Henry Prize, the Clifton Fadiman Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and other publications.

"[A] highly original mixture of drollery and catastrophe. . . . Her First American sneaks up on you. What begins as the comic adventures of a greenhorn ends up distilling the ironies and poignancies of Jewish-Black relations in America."

--The New York Times Book Review

"A wonderful novel . . . Her First American is boldly comic and full of startling scenes--to read it is to be exhilarated. It's also the kind of incredibly rich book that can make a reader pause and examine his beliefs about racism, religion, the Three Stooges, and most of all--America the amazing."

--People

"Charm, warmth, humor, and a completely unsentimental compassion are exactly what Segal provides in this bittersweet, idiosyncratic love story. . . . A truly original novel."

--Newsday

"A quiet, funny, slyly affecting novel--one that always remains under delicate control while seeming to teeter on the edge of preciousness or sentimentality."

--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Publisher: New Press

Pub date: 2026-01-20

Length: 368 pages