The youngest of eight chil­dren, Stephen J. Dub­n­er grew up in a fam­i­ly that was indus­tri­ous, ram­bunc­tious, and above all, Catholic. His par­ents were true believ­ers, their faith extend­ing to every cor­ner of their lives. But they were also Jew­ish con­verts. Dur­ing World War II, a beau­ti­ful bal­le­ri­na named Flo­rence Green­glass and a lone­ly sol­dier named Sol Dub­n­er fell in love first with Catholi­cism and then with each oth­er. The new life they cre­at­ed left no room for the old, and by the time Stephen was born, their pasts had been locked away.

Only when he reached his twen­ties did he dis­cov­er his par­ents’ extra­or­di­nary sto­ry, a sto­ry full of bit­ter estrange­ments, hard-fought tri­umphs, and deep secrets (Ethel Rosen­berg, exe­cut­ed as an atom­ic spy in 1953, was his moth­er’s first cousin). In exca­vat­ing the sto­ry, he felt the tug of the reli­gion his par­ents had aban­doned and began to pur­sue it as vig­or­ous­ly as they had pur­sued their adopt­ed faith. Along the way, he met dozens of his own Jew­ish rel­a­tives, trav­eled to his grand­par­ents’ shtetl in Poland, re-cre­at­ed the life of his late father, wres­tled with the impli­ca­tions of the Holo­caust, and saw his rela­tion­ship with his moth­er cur­dle so thor­ough­ly that it would fall to the Arch­bish­op of New York, John Car­di­nal O’Con­nor, to help bro­ker a peace.

Choos­ing My Reli­gion is a lumi­nous mem­oir, craft­ed with the eye of a jour­nal­ist and the art of a nov­el­ist. In turns com­ic and heart­break­ing, it tells the sto­ry of a fam­i­ly torn apart by reli­gion, sus­tained by faith, and reunit­ed by the truth that is revealed in these pages.