Cohen explores her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty in a new mem­oir about redis­cov­er­ing her moth­er thir­ty years after her death, dur­ing the hard­est year Alice has had to face: the year her youngest daugh­ter needs a har­row­ing surgery, her eldest daugh­ter decides to reunite with her birth moth­er, and Alice her­self receives a daunt­ing diag­no­sis. As it turns out, it is entire­ly pos­si­ble for the peo­ple we have lost to come back to us when we need them the most. The Evil Eye is always look­ing over her shoul­der, ready to pounce if she admits her hap­pi­ness or good for­tune. A flood of mem­o­ries about her moth­er, whom she tried for years to for­get, serves as a spring­board for an explo­ration of spir­i­tu­al ques­tions and para­dox­es. Although let­ting her moth­er back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice approach­es it with humor, intel­li­gence, and hon­esty. Under­stand­ing and for­giv­ing her mother’s par­ent­ing trans­gres­sions leads her to accept her own, and to real­ize that she doesn’t have to be per­fect to be a good mother.