Susan J. Gordon

From Pocahontas to Priscilla Presley, Annie Oakley to Yoko Ono, Grace Kelly to Coretta Scott King, no woman ever forgets her wedding day. Here are 366 poignant, passionate or hilarious wedding stories of how extraordinary couples met, courted, and wed. A rich testament to marriage, WEDDING DAYS is something to give, receive, and treasure. It's for engaged couples, newlyweds, long-married couples, and best men and women searching for that perfect wedding story or toast. Artists, abolitionists, celebrities, statesmen and women, royalty and rebels are all represented in Susan J. Gordon's evocative portraits, with surprising, little-known and romantic details including: Napoleon spent his wedding night with Josephine battling her snarling pug dog, who refused to leave his mistress's bed and left teeth marks in the future Emperor of France's leg (March 9, 1796); The Marquis de Lafayette gave his friend, Alexander Hamilton, a pair of glittering rhinestone shoe buckles when he married Elizabeth Schuyler (December 14, 1780); Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous Siamese twins, married two sisters and fathered twenty-one children (April 13, 1843); Irving Berlin gave heiress Ellin Mackay the copyright to his song, "Always" when her father cut her out of his $10 million estate for eloping with the Russian-Jewish immigrant (Jan 4, 1926); Russian playwright Anton Chekhov was "simply terrified of the wedding ceremony" (May 25, 1901); Elvis Presley sang "The Hawaiian Wedding Song" to his bride, Priscilla, as he carried her over the threshold of their honeymoon getaway in Palm Springs CA (May 1, 1967); Alexander Graham Bell's struggles to invent a device enabling deaf people—including his fiance, Mabel—to hear led him, indirectly, to invent the telephone. (July 11, 1877). In every story in WEDDING DAYS, the enduring qualities of love shine through.

In Because of Eva, an American Jewish woman travels to Eastern Europe and Israel to solve mysteries in her family’s past by delving into World War II and Holocaust history. What began as a seemingly simple search for ""Eva,"" the elderly relative who had signed Gordon’s grandfather’s death certificate in New York long ago, became a journey of discovery when Gordon found her in Tel Aviv. There, she heard Eva’s stories of survival during the Holocaust, especially in Nazi-occupied Budapest. Eventually, Gordon would retrace Eva’s steps in Budapest and visit ancestral towns in Ukraine to bear witness to the slaughter of entire populations of Jews. Amid remnants of loss and destruction in the small town where her grandfather was born, Gordon also uncovered details of her family’s world before relatives immigrated to America. Gordon’s journey into her past provided the deep sense of connection and belonging she needed as an adult child of divorce and abuse. Gaining insight about her family’s history, Gordon reconciles issues of betrayal and loyalty, and finally finds her place in Judaism. Part memoir, part detective story, Because of Eva is an intimate tale of one woman’s history within the epic sweep of world events in the twentieth century.

In Because of Eva, an American Jewish woman travels to Eastern Europe and Israel to solve mysteries in her family’s past by delving into World War II and Holocaust history. What began as a seemingly simple search for ""Eva,"" the elderly relative who had signed Gordon’s grandfather’s death certificate in New York long ago, became a journey of discovery when Gordon found her in Tel Aviv. There, she heard Eva’s stories of survival during the Holocaust, especially in Nazi-occupied Budapest. Eventually, Gordon would retrace Eva’s steps in Budapest and visit ancestral towns in Ukraine to bear witness to the slaughter of entire populations of Jews. Amid remnants of loss and destruction in the small town where her grandfather was born, Gordon also uncovered details of her family’s world before relatives immigrated to America. Gordon’s journey into her past provided the deep sense of connection and belonging she needed as an adult child of divorce and abuse. Gaining insight about her family’s history, Gordon reconciles issues of betrayal and loyalty, and finally finds her place in Judaism. Part memoir, part detective story, Because of Eva is an intimate tale of one woman’s history within the epic sweep of world events in the twentieth century.