Hi Balanced, what did your mother consider to be Jewish books by Jewish authors? I suppose I was lucky, and my mother had a very wide definition of what was a Jewish book.
As a teenager, I read the epic novels of I.J. Singer (Israel Joseph Singer, elder brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer), with his sweeping histories of generations of Jewish families in Europe, and eventually America. The engrossing stories had extraordinarily vivid characters linked with their historical and socioeconomic settings. I recall “The Brothers Ashkenazi” and “The Family Carnovsky,” in particular. At the time of their writing, they were serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward and were extremely popular. When you finished one of these large novels, you felt like you had known and been part of the family, and I was always sorry to have to leave the characters at “The End.”
Not sure that most here would consider these Jewish books, and they may not be modest enough for general consumption, but they brought history alive, were never predictable, had wonderfully bad and delightfully bad characters, and were written by a first-rate talent. They start out in the shtetls or cities of Europe, and end up in America: you feel as if you made the trip with them.
It’s been over 35 years since I read these books, and they made a lasting impression on me. I also enjoyed them immensely during the weeks or months they took to read.
Some other favorites, that I would consider great Jewish literature:
1. Exodus, by Leon Uris.
2. City Boy, by Herman Wouk
3. Hope and Glory (two books) by Herman Wouk