“Step by Step: How a Young Doctor Defied the Odds and Found Her Rhythm on Everest”
But what drew me in more than the above commonalities was the Jewish story behind this “woman’s story.” Every Jewish nod — both heavy and light — felt like home to me: the way the metal snaps of her beloved grandma Amama’s housecoat cool her skin whenever Zieman snuggles in her familiar lap; the pungent Passover-evoking smell of pike, carp, and whitefish emerging from brown butcher paper to later become the (polarizing) “oval-shaped patties” known as gefiltefish with their “mouthwatering scent of sea;” the way her dad “love[s] to sit like a king” at the head of the seder table, “leading songs and stories;” how she “promise[s] to return promptly” after her first transformative visit to the Holy Land as a teen; and how Hebrew, “the language of Jewish prayer, [with its] square sounds…emphatic consonants and sharp corners, seep[s] through [her] skin…chang[ing] the shape of her mouth, the roll of [her] tongue, the feel of breath in the back of the throat…[and] the tilt of [her] chin.”
