From Publisher’s Weekly:
In Zeldis’s nuanced story of friendship and heritage, two American college students grapple with their Jewish identity in the wake of WWII. In 1946, Miriam Anne Bishop drops her first name when she enrolls at Vassar College, choosing to pass among her gentile classmates. Delia Goldhush, on the other hand, doesn’t hide her Jewishness and ignores the snubs and rude remarks made by Anne’s friends. Anne is intrigued by Delia and they form a secret friendship, which implodes when Anne chooses her gentile friends over Delia. Anne feels terribly guilty, however, and leaves her snobby clique to study in Paris for her junior year. Delia is also drawn to Paris, where she was living with her family on the eve of the German invasion. There, she searches for answers about her French sculptor mother, Sophie, who stayed behind when the Goldhushes fled back to the U.S. and may have been killed while fighting with the Resistance. Anne and Delia meet by chance in a Paris gallery, and Anne offers to help Delia, hoping to renew their friendship. Zeldis adds depth to the brisk story in her portrayal of the characters’ complex feelings about their Jewish heritage. It’s an appealing historical. —Publishers Weekly
From bookreporter:
In today’s polarized world, certain individuals are often talked about as “them” or “those people,” pejorative terms to say the least. In ONE OF THEM, Kitty Zeldis takes that phrase, those words, and exposes the microaggressions, the ignorance and the prejudice behind it. The book’s two main characters attend Vassar College. While they are Jewish and from wealthy families, their approach to life is very different.
Anne Bishop becomes part of a group of privileged WASP girls, taking tea with them and dishing tea, gossiping about fashion, other students and life. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she and her father are very close. He changed his name to Bishop when the law firm he wanted to join didn’t show an interest in him, and he thought a non-Jewish last name might help his chances. His first name changed from Jacob to Jay. He has been very successful with his new moniker. Anne’s first name is Miriam, but at Vassar she decides to go by her middle name after an unsettling event with her best friend during high school.
Delia Goldhush, on the other hand, escaped Nazi Germany after the occupation of Paris with her father, who owned an art gallery. Her mother, an artist, disappeared right before they were to depart, so they had to go on the last boat leaving France without her. Her parents were more dedicated to and consumed by their social network, art and their gallery than they were with loving their daughter. Delia’s sophisticated style, confidence and obvious intelligence draw Anne to her. They are starting to grow close until Anne participates in an event that drives a wedge into their budding friendship.
Zeldis’ narrative is fluid and easy to read. The descriptions and the reflections, combined with just the right amount of dialogue, make this a book you won’t want to put down. After all, we like these two women — both of whom are perfectly imperfect — and we want to know how they proceed in their journey. Anne and Delia are searching for something. Delia yearns for the mother she never really had. She thinks that if she can find the boxes of sculpture her mother left behind in Paris, she finally will be happy. Anne’s father died when she was in high school, so she’s on her own. But she was irrevocably changed by her short-lived relationship with Delia. She has feelings of shame for her part in what happened, and she misses the friendship that might have been.
The story takes us from Poughkeepsie, NY, to Paris, and even to the brand-new state of Israel. As Zeldis shares the unfortunate truth about the many microaggressions that Jewish people endured in the ’40s, it’s clear that those same microaggressions are still happening. And the tensions between the Jewish settlers and the Arabs in what was Palestine and is now the state of Israel? Things are just as dire today as they were then. Anne’s guide in Israel was Ahmed, and he told her that his family had lived in Palestine-now-Israel for three or four generations. He said that while many Jews had lived in Palestine, there were riots after the British conquered Syria, and most left. But “now they’re back again. Grabbing the land. Trying to force us out.” And the Arabs attack the Jews who then retaliate in what becomes a never-ending cycle. Sound familiar?
Later, the same guide tells Anne, “You Americans are so soft. Nothing bad has happened to you in a long time. But bad things have been happening to us longer than you’ve been alive.” When she replies that bad things can happen to anyone, he says that bad things happen to some people “more than others.” As Anne talks about the violence she witnessed at the kibbutz she visited, someone comments that “[n]othing is going to get settled for a long time.” Such irony. Who could have imagined that the anger, the distrust and the hatred would continue for generations?
ONE OF THEM is not a happily-ever-after story. It’s an incisive look at the post-WWII era, when antisemitism was rampant, and restrictions were in place in private country clubs, summer camps, subdivisions and the workplace. “Passing” was what some did to make life easier, and this is an insightful reveal of what that entails and how that might play out.
It would be wonderful to say that the world has changed, that religion no longer indicates the value of a person nor does the color of one’s skin. But in reality, what Zeldis has done is to cause the reader to see the unfortunate truth that all too little has improved. The conflict in the Middle East is as bad as it ever was, and antisemitism and prejudice against those from other cultures is rampant in the US, as well as other parts of the world.
But none of that takes away from the beauty of Anne and Delia’s story. It’s inspiring and a testament to the importance of forgiveness and being true to one’s self. Multifaceted protagonists, an intriguing plot and beautiful writing make this a novel not to miss.
Reviewed by Pamela Kramer on September 13, 2025
From Jewish Book Council:
Anne Bishop has just taken her place among her group of friends at the Vassar College daily tea when the others start in on another girl who lives on their hall: Delia Goldhush, an American raised in Paris.
“There’s something different about her. Something not quite right,” one says. “Everyone knows they’re a bit devious. And that they keep to themselves,” another one chimes in. Then Virginia, the leader of the pack, weighs in with her own cutting remark: “Exclusive. And superior. Like they think they’re better than other people.”
So begins the opening chapter of One of Them, a new novel by Kitty Zeldis about two Jewish women at the exclusive, then all-women’s college in Poughkeepsie, New York, in the years just after World War II. Both are forced to grapple with the casual antisemitism of their non-Jewish classmates but choose to do so in dramatically different ways.
Anne, who was Miriam growing up with her widowed father in New York City but decided to go by her more Anglo-Saxon-sounding middle name when she arrived on campus, simply allows her WASP friends to assume that she isn’t Jewish so as not to endure the snubs and slights she might otherwise face. Delia, on the other hand, proudly presents herself to the world as who she is, seemingly indifferent to her status as an outcast, content to dine, study, and partake of all the college’s intellectual riches alone.
At the beginning of the novel Anne and Delia seem to be on the verge of becoming friends, drawn together by their shared love of art, architecture, and stylish clothing, until a scandal engulfs Delia and, almost inexplicably, Anne sides with the mean girls against her. In subsequent chapters, each woman must deal with the consequences of her actions and undertake a journey of self-discovery that will wind through Paris, take a detour to Palestine just as it is about to be partitioned into a Jewish and an Arab state, and end up in the cosmopolitan yet very tribal city of New York.
Zeldis — whose previous novels Not Our Kind and The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights also explored aspects of Jewish life in America just before and after the world wars — has constructed an intricate plot with echoes of Gentleman’s Agreement, Laura Z. Hobson’s 1947 bestselling novel about “genteel” antisemitism in America, and Exodus, Leon Uris’s blockbuster about the founding of the state of Israel that came out about a decade later.
At its heart, though, One of Them is a coming-of-age story about Delia and Anne — two smart, talented, and sexually adventurous protagonists who face hardship and discrimination for being both women and Jews. Not only must they contend with the antisemitic slights of their classmates, but they also must figure out how to navigate the sexist double-standard that reigned on college campuses and in society in the era before second-wave feminism transformed higher education and every other facet of American life.
From Library Journal:
Zeldis explores a friendship between two students at Vassar College just after World War II. Anne Bishop, who used to go by Miriam, conceals her Jewishness to fit in with the popular girls. She’s unsure how to assert herself when her white friend group targets Delia Goldhush, a Jewish student who doesn’t fit in and doesn’t care to. Anne quietly befriends Delia, but the dynamic between them is corrupted by a betrayal. Both women’s families have traumatic histories, and both grapple with their Jewish identity, which ultimately leads them to Palestine. As they intersect on the eve of the creation of Israel, the tension within their identities intensifies, and both women try to find a voice for themselves and with each other. The milestones of first loves, the agony of family secrets, and a hunger to find their place in the world guide each woman in a different direction until the fitting and satisfying ending. VERDICT A strong story of women’s friendship set against a dynamic historical era. The journey Anne and Delia undertake will inspire plenty of fruitful book club discussions.