One Hundred Saturdays: In Search of a Lost World (2022)

Illustrations by Maira Kalman

The story of 99-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years evolve into a novel-like portrait of a dynamic young woman who came of age in the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, was deported to Auschwitz where she saw ninety percent of her community extinguished, and afterward rebuilt a life for herself whose worldview expanded rather than narrowed as she grew older.  

With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then Michael Frank came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up.  Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other’s company as this magical modern-day Scheherazade traveled back in time to conjure a vanished world. Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella develops a tender and transformative friendship with Michael, who in return indelibly captures one of the last survivors at nearly the last possible moment as the two explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived. 

Named one of the best books of 2022 by The Wall Street Journal, One Hundred Saturdays received a Natan Notable Book Award, two National Book Awards from the Jewish Book Council, and the Sophie Brody Award for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature.

“One Hundred Saturdays is a sobering yet heartening book about how friendship, remembrance, and being heard can help assuage profound dislocation and loss. It is also a reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift.” —Heller McAlpin, The Wall Street Journal

“A tribute not only to an exceptional time and place, but also to the exceptional person charged with the task of commemorating it, a witness whose independence, integrity, and zest for life would have been irresistible at any time, in any place.” —Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books

“Incandescent…Frank’s narrative shines with an ebullience, thanks to the ‘unusually rich, textured, and evolving’ life of his utterly enchanting muse. The result provides an essential, humanist look into a dark chapter of 20th-century history.” —Publishers Weekly

“A compelling and unique story of genocide and loss. The central figure, Stella Levi, is intensely captivating and a woman with remarkable insight.” —Margaret Heller, Library Journal, starred review

“Reading One Hundred Saturdays is is like watching an artist piece together a mosaic…. A sensitive portrait of an extraordinary woman.” —Deborah Mason, Book Page, starred review

A “beautifully crafted true story of friendship, love, survival, and redemption.” — Melissa Norstedt, Booklist, starred review

“Quite simply, essential reading….Michael Frank has done a masterful job with One Hundred Saturdays of coaxing these stories from the sometimes reluctant narrator. The Rhodes Holocaust is an important and lesser-known chapter in history, and Stella Levi’s vivid remembrances deserve a wide audience.” —Linda Hitchcock, BookTrib

Rights: Avid Reader, Ed. Lauren Wein, World English; Einaudi, Italy; Profile, UK; Beijng Han Tan Zhi Dao, China; Rowholt, Germany; Ikaros Publishing, Greece.

WHAT IS MISSING (2019)

Costanza Ansaldo, a half-Italian and half-American translator, is convinced that she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, an eminent writer, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she spent many happy times in her youth, and there she meets, first, Andrew Weissman, an acutely sensitive seventeen-year-old, and, soon afterward, his father, Henry Weissman, a charismatic New York physician who specializes in―as it happens―reproductive medicine.

With three lives each marked by heartbreak and absence―of a child, a parent, a partner, or a clear sense of identity―What is Missing offers Costanza, Andrew, and Henry the opportunity to make themselves whole when the triangle resumes three months later in New York, where the relationships among them turn and tighten with combustive effects that cut to the core of what it means to be a father, a son, and―for Costanza―a potential mother.

"Mr. Frank explores the ways that scientific breakthroughs have caused the legal meaning of family to become detached from its genetic definition. The complicated family unit he ultimately forms is very much like this rewarding novel: something that may appear basic and old-fashioned but is in reality built on uncharted ground." — Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"A penetrating examination of how a life can be defined by contingency and surprise, marked both by the absence of things long dreamed of and by unexpected presences." — The New Yorker

"Frank’s psychologically astute, engrossing debut novel demonstrates his keen instinct for family dynamics that was evident in his fascinating memoir, The Mighty Franks . . . Frank’s compelling characters each contend with their inchoate sense of self and their abiding need for family." — National Book Review (5 Hot Books)

"[A] memorable debut . . . The novel is filled with trenchant moments of sweetness and betrayal, as well a stunning reveal of the harrowing gauntlet infertile women go through to conceive. This is an intricate and dynamic examination of familial ties: both what strengthens them and what can tear them apart." — Publishers Weekly

"Frank is insightful and sympathetic on the mental and physical toll of [IVF] treatments, and he has a strong sense of family dynamics and crackling dialogue . . . [An] overall impressive debut." — Kirkus