2019
264 pages | ISBN 978-1-550506-99-0
**Winner of the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction (Western Canada Jewish Book Awards)**
**Shortlisted for the Wilson Fiction Prize (BC and Yukon Book Prizes)**
Sarah is the youngest of the three Levine sisters. At twenty-five, she is rudderless, caught in a paralysis that keeps her from seizing her own life.
When Sarah is fired from her Toronto job, a chance stay in Paris opens her up to new direction and purpose. But when she reads the writing on the wall above her local Métro subway station, death to the Jews, shadows from childhood rise again. And as her path crosses that of Laila, a young woman living in an exile remote from the luxuries of 1980s Paris, Sarah stumbles towards to an act of terrorism that may realize her childhood fears.
In this new novel by the author of The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, writing that is both sensual and taut creates a tightly woven, compelling narrative.
Reviews
#885 Crossing Rue Des Rosiers (Paul Headrick, The Ormsby Review, 13/08/2020)
"[Rhea]’s skill with language is evident in her handling of the two distinct stories here, and the novel is a master-class in the intelligent handling of voice."
Author Paints Different Views of A City In Trouble (Norman Ravvin, Canadian Jewish News, 09/02/2020)
"In Rue des Rosiers her past work as a poet contributes to the evocative rendering of charmingly mundane Toronto streets in contrast with Paris’ touristic sheen. Rue des Rosiers moves expertly toward a dark denouement, but Tregebov leaves room for a kind of rapprochement between her two very different female characters."
Review (Karissa, Karissa Reads Books, 26/06/2019)
"Tregebov plays with language a lot in several interesting ways. There are the common and dissimilar ways of French and English, the roots and origins of words and plant names, things that Sarah dwells on privately. There is the sense of accounting, something gained only when something else is lost."
SaskBooks Book Picks (Shelley Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews, 03/11/2019)
"Rue des Rosiers by Vancouverite Rhea Tregebov is not just an exemplary novel, it's also an important book that examines anti-Semitism and empathetically puts faces on the victims and aggressors.... [It's a] richly-layered story."
Interviews
Word Vancouver online (Sam Margolis, Jewish Independent, 10/07/2020)
"To examine goodness, one has to examine evil as its corollary."
The Zed Questionnaire (Zoomer, 01/08/2019)
Gripping New Novel Looks at How a Violent Event Gives a Woman Her Life (Dana Gee, Vancouver Sun, 14/02/2020)
Articles
15 Canadian books to read for Jewish Heritage Month in 2022 (CBC Books, 24/05/2022)
Rhea's novel makes this round-up for books to read for Jewish Heritage month.
VPL Picks: Jewish Canadian Fiction (Vancouver Public Library, 31/05/2021)
Rhea's novel makes this roundup of Jewish Canadian fiction from the Vancouver Public Library.
Sarah and Laila's Paris (Rhea Tregebov, Rhea Tregebov, 15/07/2019)
A lovely piece by Rhea Tregebov celebrating some of the special places in Paris she highlights in her novel Rue des Rosiers.
About the Author
Rhea Tregebov’s first novel, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, published by Coteau Books, won the J.I Segal Award for fiction, was shortlisted for the Kobzar Award, and was listed in the Globe and Mail’s top 100 books. An award-winning poet and celebrated author of children’s picture books, Tregebov has also edited numerous anthologies.
Born in Saskatoon and raised in Winnipeg, she did postgraduate studies at Cornell and Boston Universities, worked for many years as a freelance writer and editor in Toronto, and from 2004 to 2017 was a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia. Now an Associate Professor Emerita at UBC, Tregebov continues to live and write in Vancouver.
The Knife Sharpener's Bell (2019)
(alive): Selected and New Poems (2004)
