Rhoda Lerman is known as a “writers’ writer.” When her first novel Call Me Ishtar was published in 1973 the New York Times termed her “a first novelist of formidable gifts.” Her subsequently critically acclaimed, award-winning novels including The Girl That He Marries, The Book of the Night, God’s Ear, Animal Acts and Eleanor have received remarkable praise from the national and international press. As a speaker and writer, her work has been recognized and honored in India, Tibet, South America, and Europe. She has taught and lectured at major universities, including Ghent, Harvard, Wisconsin, Colorado, Syracuse, Buffalo, and California Institute of the Arts as consultant. She has served the State Department as an AMPART speaker. In 1979 her novel Eleanor, based on years of extensive research, was hailed by critics as “beautiful, elegantly written, true as anything could be. An imaginative success, Lerman brings what has always been a stick figure in history to glowing, aching life.” It is from this novel that Ms. Lerman adapted the play, Eleanor Roosevelt, Her Secret Journey.

From  The New York Times, “Ms. Lerman was a difficult writer to categorize because her imagination was eccentric and because her books didn’t resemble one another. A lush stylist with a vivid, sarcastic wit and a taste for ribaldry, she was sometimes compared to Philip Roth for her wicked depictions of the battle of the sexes, albeit from the distaff side.”