Fay's Men
Fay’ s Men traces the adventures and misadventures of Fay Watkins, a Texas-born dancer and spiritual seeker, on the poignantly funny, circuitous path to self-realization. Prompted by her naï ve, almost quixotic idealism, Fay’ s quest inspires hasty decisions in love and a disillusioning spiritual encounter that nearly knocks her off course. Undaunted, she boldly pursues her goal, journeying from home to an initiatory stint as a revolutionary in Mexico, then to New York, where she leaps into marriage with a wacky psychiatrist, then to an Israeli Zen center and a Japanese monastery, followed by a hilariously disastrous trip to Paris with her Zen master, and an unintended admission as a patient in the psychiatric ward of her husband’ s hospital— an experience that finally propels her to self-discovery on a palm-fringed beach in Hawaii.
Recipient of the Theodore Hoepfner Fiction Award and past writer-in-residence at the Mishkenot Sha’ ananim Jerusalem Art Colony, Perle Besserman was praised by Isaac Bashevis Singer for the “ clarity and feeling for mystic lore” of her writing and by Publisher’ s Weekly for its “ wisdom [that] points to a universal practice of the heart.” Her fiction includes novels Pilgrimage (Houghton Mifflin), Kabuki Boy (Aqueous Books) and Widow Zion (Pinyon Publishing), and the short story collection Yeshiva Girl (Homebound Publishing). Her stories regularly appear in print journals like Agni, The Southern
