Forest Walk on a Friday by Lynne Golodner book cover

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Read FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY for book club discussion this year, and buy 7 or more books from the author directly at a 20% discount.

FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY

“Get swept away in the beauty of Lynne’s writing, and the care in which she crafts each and every story.”

Since she was six years old, Lynne (Cohn, Schreiber) Golodner has turned to writing to make sense of the world, figure out her feelings and process experiences. In this riveting, heart-spilling collection of personal essays, Lynne takes the reader on a journey with her through travel, religious exploration, parenting, relationships and intimate encounters with the natural world.

Forest Walk on a Friday contains 28 essays—20 of which have been previously published in literary journals and magazines—articulating the ache of lost love, embarking on a soul journey to find happiness alone on a mountaintop, making peace with the loss of a father and examining what work is.

The Detroit-based author of award-winning novels, poetry collections and nonfiction books, Lynne opens her heart to readers in a daring and brave way, inviting them to contemplate how humans find happiness and what makes life worth living. As with all of her books, Lynne shares the beauty of her Jewish identity and the ancestry she inherited, through food, visits with beloved relatives and quiet walks in the cemetery to visit those she’s lost.

She details her two marriages, showcasing the courage it took to leave one that didn’t work and sharing the gratitude she found in discovering new love at midlife. As a parent of four children, Lynne is candid about the joys and challenges of being an attentive parent and the emotions that come with letting go of her grown children as they prepare to leave home.

And Lynne writes about connecting with the earth, finding herself in the soil and on the river, and discovering the happiness of coming home to oneself. Readers will salivate over descriptions of oysters fresh from the ocean, just-picked strawberries staining mouths with their sweetness, blueberries bursting off the bush and the familiarity of a grandmother’s chicken soup, fragrant and flavorful.

Forest Walk on a Friday is an exquisite wander through one woman’s life, offering universal lessons about how to be happy with what you have, how to cherish the identity you inherit and how to be open to possibility as one walks through life.

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“Get swept away in the beauty of Lynne’s writing, and the care in which she crafts each and every story.

To write from the heart requires first baring your soul – a place of vulnerability that few authors have the strength, confidence, and ability to enter. Yet that is precisely what Lynne Golodner manages in Forest Walk on a Friday. Do you value elegant writing, fresh storytelling, all penned by a writer who isn’t hiding behind pretense or a carefully crafted avatar? A writer like you. A writer like me – broken, imperfect, and struggling in this complicated dance we call life. Then I dare you to get swept away in the beauty of Lynne’s writing, and the care in which she crafts each and every word.”

Danny Hankner
Editor-in-Chief & Founder, Story Unlikely

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“This is a beautiful collection of landscapes geographical and biographical – from Michigan and Hawaii to Scotland and Budapest; Israel to India and back again. With reflections ranging across family, food, faith and more, Lynne Golodner excels at capturing the messy reality of being human: being a woman; being Jewish; being a parent; being a lover. And the exact tastes and textures of eating a tomato off the vine.”

Elizabeth Gowing
Prize-winning author of six books and co-founder of the Ideas Partnership

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“… an inspiring meditation that engages every one of the five senses. It made me want to dig my hands in the earth, make chicken soup from scratch, climb a mountain, and then write about all of it.

Dancing with her Judaism as an Orthodox wife, a mother negotiating her children’s relationship with religion, a post-October 7th witness and volunteer, and a tourist walking the streets of Budapest, Golodner explores God, privilege, and what it means to be at home and to be human…”

Jessica Fein
Author of Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams and Broken Genes

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“… This great collection of essays shows us the depth and scope of her prose and of human emotions. Lynne takes readers to a variety of different places in these essays—from her experiences with Orthodox Judaism to interesting scenes of travel to Scotland, Jerusalem and India. There are insightful moments of motherhood, raising her children as a single mother, and family. She shows how she uses swimming as a meditation, and she offers a unique look at life and death through the passing of her beloved father. This book has it all…“

he end of this powerful story, so do we.”

M. L. Liebler
Author of Hound Dog: A Poet’s Memoir of Rock, Revolution and Redemption

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“Lynne Golodner takes us on a journey of forging her path that breathes meaning into life and bathes the soul. In each of the lyrical and lush essays in Forest Walk on a Friday, Golodner weaves a tapestry of moments that includes riveting adventures, passionate introspection and to destinations most have never known.”

Kim Kozłowski
Writer and journalist, The Detroit News

Praise

Book Clubs

Read FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY for book club discussion this year, and buy 7 or more books from the author directly at a 20% discount.

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