In the tradition of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Shifra Horn’s beautifully imagined and lavishly told debut novel tells the story of four generations of women in one family against the background of 100 years in Jerusalem.

The story begins at the end, with Amal, the fourth generation, whose husband deserted her after the birth of their first-born son. Her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother are overjoyed because the birth of a healthy boy means that the curse against the women of their family has been broken: there is no daughter to inherit it. “Come, listen,” they say to Amal, “listen to the story of the family’s ‘four mothers’ and the story of the curse that foreshadowed each father’s disappearance. Be comforted by your foremothers in blood and in spirit.”

There is Mazal, the orphan, whose ill-fated marriage initiates the curse; her daughter Sara, the most beautiful girl in the village whose golden hair becomes a symbol for her mysterious ability to heal; Sara’s daughter Pnina-Mazal, the unwanted child whose talent for knowing others’ thoughts brings her both joy and sorrow; and her daughter Geula, Amal’s mother, whose razor-sharp intellect and idealism is both her gift and her cross to bear.

Epic in scope, mysterious, rich in the magical realism of fable and the folklore of legend, Four Mothers is a masterpiece of storytelling to be cherished.