Evening Begins the Day by Jessica Brilliant Keener; Virginia Beach, Virginia: Köehlerbooks; © 2026; ISBN 9798897-470303; 308 pages plus appendices, $22.95.
By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
Jews raised in the tradition will not puzzle over this book’s title, Evening Begins the Day. Our days begin shortly after sunset and last until the next sunset’s onset. Genesis 1 explains why: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” For those not raised in the tradition, Jews and Gentiles alike, the title may be puzzling.
However, this is not a religious tract, although kabalistic suggestions for counting the omer are thrown in. I must confess I didn’t find the nexus between what is essentially a story of suburban life and those suggestions for meditations on each day of the 49 between the second day of Passover and the arrival of Shavuot.
What I did find were the stories of neighbors in different forms of family crisis.
The Meyer family is enmeshed in a battle between Lauren, a high school senior, and her mother, Cynthia. The father, David, plays a resigned, passive role. The gist of the mother-daughter battle is Cynthia’s blithe and maddening presumption that she knows what Lauren needs in life. Lauren is acutely aware of the social and economic injustices affecting her generation that apparently make no impact on her well-off parents.
Their battle takes the form of Lauren being extremely disrespectful to Cynthia and cutting classes so often that she is perilously close to expulsion from her high school.
Meanwhile, neighbor Rachel Cohen discovers that her husband, Ezra, has been carrying on an emotional affair with Deidre. While no sex was involved in their clandestine meetings, Ezra’s and Deidre’s relationship trampled Rachel’s feelings of security, intimacy, and exclusivity – so much so that she separated from Ezra who shamefacedly apologized and worked to return to her good graces.
Both families sought to heal their wounds. Principled principals do not give up on each other. The novel made me think of “Dedicated to the One I Love,” the 1961 Shirelles hit in which one lyric expressing hope that everything in the end would turn out okay was “the darkest hour is just before dawn.”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.