Tap Dancing on a Hot Skillet
A Memoir
Tap Dancing on a Hot Skillet is Gabrielle’s debut memoir—a coming of age story about growing up in a Jewish family of six in the Deep South of the 1950s and ’60s with an unpredictable father, an absentee mother and three young siblings to protect from the chaos. Using a combination of personal stories set against a backdrop of cultural context—the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and pop culture references of films and music (from Elvis to the Beatles)—Gabrielle creates a scaffolding by which to hang the evolving angst of the ’60s contrasted with the naiveté of the ’50s told through the eyes of a young person caught at the center. The stories are told with a keen sense of visual detail, southern wit, and an authentic adolescent voice that helps characters jump off the page and sit right along next to you.
Read an excerpt from Chapter 1, “The Silvery Moon.”
New Audiobook! Hear from Gabrielle in her own voice.
“This is a different kind of coming-of-age story. It traces the life of a Jewish girl in the American South from childhood through adolescence. The book is an autobiographical almost-novel that holds the reader´s interest, touching on the relationships between a minority group and the majority society of northern Florida in the last mid-century, with parts of its dialogue typical of the slang and regionalisms of that place and period. Most of all, it is the saga of how a member of a dysfunctional family, in the process of growing up and protecting her younger siblings, not only survives but flourishes. Tap Dancing on a Hot Skillet grows from a page-turner into an engaging, even riveting story. It is well worth your while.”
— Dr. Dovid Stea