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All Who Go Do Not Return
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Shulem Deen
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's summary
A moving and revealing exploration of Hasidic life and one man's struggles with faith, family, and community.
Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world - only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at 18 is arranged, and several children soon follow.
Deen's first transgression - turning on the radio - is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library and, later, the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely. Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children.
In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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Accident of Birth
- By: Heather Neff
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Reba Freeman has loved two men in her life. Her current husband, Carl, has supported her through their 20-year marriage and given her all the material wealth a suburban wife could hope for. Reba is comfortable, if not necessarily content, in her life with Carl and their blossoming teenage daughter, Marisa, until she learns that her first love and first husband, Joseph Thomas, has been detained by the World Court of Human Rights.
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Good Listen
- By Tricia on 02-24-08
By: Heather Neff
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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A Hope in The Unseen
- An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.
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Great Story
- By Adam Evans on 12-25-10
By: Ron Suskind
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The Debt
- By: Angela Hunt
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Emma suddenly finds her sordid life miraculously transformed by God's redeeming grace. She soon marries a godly young man, who eventually becomes a nationally recognized preacher with a television audience of 50 million. But after 24 years as an exemplary pastor's wife, one call changes everything.
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Great Story
- By Trish on 11-05-07
By: Angela Hunt
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu Kling on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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What listeners say about All Who Go Do Not Return
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- pacia
- 04-29-17
An eloquent and fascinating look into a secretive world
Shulum Deen is a very gifted writer and his reading was both powerful and pleasant. He was telling a story, not reciting a text. Ironically, it was probably the upbringing that he escaped that allowed him to craft such a beautiful story as he comes from a culture with a strong textual and oral tradition. His story is much more of a Bildungsroman (personal growth tale) than a juicy tell-all. I highly recommend this book.
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9 people found this helpful
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- A. Katz
- 12-08-16
Very well done
Any additional comments?
I'd quibble with the Publisher's Summary on the Audible page, because I didn't come away from the book feeling like Shulem was "raised to believe that questions are dangerous."
It sounded/read to me that he chose, for very personal reasons, in his teen and early adult years, to join a community that believed that questions are dangerous. And that this was the community he was married and had a family in.
The trajectory of his loss of belief is a very tragically beautiful read, as he desperately looks for answers to the questions that his community doesn't want him to ask. He seems to have specific answers in mind that he needs to hear, and when he doesn't get the answers he wants, he takes it very hard.
The tragedy is in the community's response, and what happened with his exwife and his children in response to his personal evolution. The beauty is in his birth family's (his mother's and his siblings') unconditional love and acceptance, as they remain believers (notably not in the same community that he chose to live in).
The audio performance is very well done.
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8 people found this helpful
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- KJE
- 05-25-20
An Education
I always wanted to know about those people with the ringlets in their hair and why the women wore wigs when they had perfectly good hair underneath. I can't believe how isolated their lives are from modern society and how narrow their life experiences. It takes a lot of courage to walk away from the only life you know and enter a new world knowing you do so alone. I found it very sad that Shulem had to loose contact with his kids and cut off from all he knew.
The book is worth the read. It is not riveting but it is a story that is well worth telling. And the book is very personal; you feel like you know Shulem. I wish Shulem much love and a rich life. For sure he has taken a very brave path.
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5 people found this helpful
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- mark
- 06-10-20
Great book!
I thought the story was fantastic. I find all the details of Hasidic life so interesting and Mr. Deen's story is fascinating. I couldn't stop listening. The way he described his life and feelings so vividly with such detail, made it such a pleasure to listen to. The performance was excellent as well.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Elinor Lipman
- 01-01-17
Gorgeously written, fascinating
Bravo! I couldn't (in the audio sense) put it down, and hope for a sequel. I recommend this eye-opening, poignant, heartfelt, honest memoir wholeheartedly.
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3 people found this helpful
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Great book!
I was engaged and interested from start to finish. The author tells his story in a balanced and well thought out manner. He is such a good story teller; objective (as humanly possible) and poetic.
The author narrates the book which was a bonus in this case.
I highly recommend!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Marian
- 04-20-19
The Imperfect Finding of Yourself in the Tech Age
Achingly true, beautifully written biography of the poignant tensions of a modern man looking for individuation, intellectual freedom, and his place in community. Although the setting is Hasidic-Judaism, those of any background who have sought independence or authentic satisfaction can readily relate. The author’s experiences have breadth; this book can be used for reading groups. We all are at risk for community disruption, isolation, shame, second-guessing, ostracism, parental alienation, divorce angst, and intolerable emotions. Behaviors or cultural designs that may have been adaptive in the past can be impossibly slow to change. The spiteful ones who perpetuate control in those designs seem desperate more than wise, cruel more than nurturing, anxiety-driven more than optimistic, and habitual more than logical. At the same time, I do think a few of the heart-centered details of the author’s experience were unnecessary and were likely inflammatory for his relationships; sometimes we defend ourselves with the wrong words when people do not understand us or do not speak the love languages we need. The author’s total losses hurt all involved; to ostracize and shame someone does not improve those who do the ousting or the shaming. Bigger societal issues are unanswered and screaming; how do we build healthy micro-communities within this technologically driven society? How can we build identities that are authentic but not homogenized? The scrupulosity of extreme faith satisfies some, but, to the author, the heretics move and shake the universe.
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- Joan Zak
- 07-11-20
Well-written and thoughtful
The book was riveting. The author speaks poignantly and honestly. He never overdramatizes. His recollections of earlier times add to the story and don't distract from it. He takes responsibility for his actions and shows how one decision can have drastic effects. I would love to get to know him better and look forward to, reading more of his writing
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1 person found this helpful
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- france
- 07-09-19
Amazing, gripping, beautiful and heart breaking
I rarely write reviews but this one I must recommend. Shulem’s story is rich in emotion and colour, and it will hold you long after it’s over. Clearly Shulem was meant to be a writer and I’m glad that’s what he does now.
I look forward to more from him.
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- Colorado Mountain Lady
- 02-02-24
Good performance
It was painful to see the author limiting himself but that WAS part of his truth so I get it
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