Roberta Silman, a second-generation Jewish-American, began writing in the 1960s and gained recognition with her highly praised short-story collection Blood Relations (1977) and her novel Boundaries (1979). Though she writes about Eastern European Jews, their assimilated offspring, and lonely, sensitive women, her work has universal appeal. In contrast to much contemporary feminist fiction, Silman's subdued tone, broad themes, and compassionate characters represent a return to traditional literature.

Both her short stories and her novel contain biographical elements reflecting the author's American-Jewish background. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 to Herman Karpel, a Lithuanian-Jewish curtain manufacturer, and Phoebe Brand Karpel, an American Jew, Silman lived near Orthodox relatives in Borough Park, which became the setting for the story "The Grandparents." Although the family soon moved to a prosperous Long Island suburb, they frequently visited Brooklyn, enabling Silman to compare Orthodox and assimilated Jewish life. Years later she would write about the...