Grow­ing up in Brook­lyn in the 1960s and ​’70s, Lin­da Brody Bakst knew she was Jew­ish — but not quite how she fit into the sto­ry. There were mat­zoh balls and Yid­dish expres­sions, Holo­caust shad­ows and fam­i­ly secrets, cul­tur­al pride and silent grief. There were lov­ing grand­par­ents who had lost every­thing, par­ents who car­ried unspo­ken bur­dens, and a world chang­ing faster than any­one could ful­ly under­stand. More Than Mat­zoh Balls is a ten­der, reflec­tive, and often humor­ous mem­oir about iden­ti­ty, loss, resilience, and the qui­et pow­er of fam­i­ly. Through rich­ly detailed sto­ry­telling, Bakst explores the com­plex­i­ty of grow­ing up Jew­ish in Amer­i­ca — where tra­di­tion meets inde­pen­dence, mem­o­ry meets mod­ern life, and belong­ing is some­thing ques­tioned, and reclaimed; from her grandmother’s warm kitchen in Canar­sie to the shift­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal land­scape of late twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, Bakst traces what is hand­ed down through food, silence, laugh­ter, and love — and what must be dis­cov­ered for one­self. A heart­felt trib­ute to the gen­er­a­tions who came before and the search to under­stand one’s place among them. More Than Mat­zoh Balls is a sto­ry for any­one who has won­dered where they come from, who they are, and what it means to car­ry a lega­cy forward.