She may not have been the first Jewish American woman to publish fiction in the secular press, but it seems likely that Martha Wolfenstein was the first to use Jewish characters in her stories. At a time when Jewish immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated, surged into American cities from eastern Europe, Wolfenstein, an immigrant herself, chose to write stories about Jews who lived in Europe, presumably in the town where she had been born. As a child Wolfenstein immigrated with her parents, Bertha Briger Wolfenstein and Samuel Wolfenstein, from Insterburg, Prussia, to St. Louis, Missouri, where her father, the first ordained Reform rabbi in Europe, served as spiritual leader of Congregation B'nai El. Several years later, Rabbi Wolfenstein moved his family of eight to Cleveland, Ohio, when he took on the position of superintendent of the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum.

Wolfenstein attended Cleveland public schools but was forced...