“Riveting—compulsive reading, authoritative from the first sentence. A fine book from a powerful new imagination. Her prose: modest, lucid, and allusive, and ready to knock you down with its strength of perception.”

—PaknTreger

“In the Image is a novel teeming with wisdom—wisdom of Jewish history, theology, and culture, and teeming also with the more quiet, more elusive, wisdom of the human heart. It is a novel full of earned empathy for her characters, both young and old, male and female, religious and secular. I left the novel spellbound by the breadth of Dara Horn’s imagination and the generosity of her vision.”

—Andrew Furman, author of

Contemporary Jewish American Writers

and the Multicultural Dilemma

“[A] fascinating first novel by Dara Horn . . . incredibly poignant . . . with audacious appropriation of lines and themes from Jewish texts. . . . It takes a writer with great self-confidence to pull off this sort of work. . . . [Horn] is a true talent and one of the more promising young American Jewish novelists of the new century.”

—Jerusalem Post

“A novel as deeply felt as it is audacious. In the Image is a religious inquiry, a love story, a primer on what to look for when choosing a diamond, an exploration of the dangers and possibilities that lie in the never-reposeful past, a century-long chronicle of the Jewish experience in America, a poetic meditation on the power of images, and a score of other things, all of them connected with a great and satisfying ingenuity in an absorbing narrative that is told with moral passion, vigor, humor, and an unflagging fascination with the coincidences, miseries, grotesqueries, and triumphs of life.”

—Richard Snow, American Heritage Magazine

“An enchanting, introspective and emotionally charged debut. A warmth of appreciation of Jewish culture and heritage, and eloquent use of recurring motifs.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In this exceptional first novel, Horn deploys rare imaginative gifts to probe the most complex of spiritual themes. Poignant and profound, a novel that invites careful re-reading.”

—Booklist, starred review

“[An] unsettling, otherworldly novel.”

—Boston Globe

“In the Image is a gripping story told with learning and passion. It does not just use Jewish sources, it breathes them, and breathes into them the breath of life. Here are fascinating characters who think, who learn, whose lives unfold and whose souls grow.”

—Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple;

coauthor of Making Loss Matter and author of Why Be Jewish?

“In the Image is one of those rare first novels that feels so accomplished you believe the author has been writing for decades already. It is a novel that seems flooded with godly light. Dara Horn’s characters—especially Leora, whose journeys lie at the narrative center of the book—become our friends, our relatives. The novel’s movements across borders and boundaries are revelatory.”

—Jay Parini, author of The Apprentice Lover

“Horn creates small worlds, beautifully detailed and textured, that ultimately fit together.”

—Jewish Woman