“Jew­ish Luck” is an iron­ic term in Russ­ian and Yid­dish. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Rus­sia has con­sid­ered Jews to be a ​“prob­lem,” but Vera and Alisa, two Len­in­grad-born Jew­ish women, con­sid­er the Com­munist gov­ern­ment to be the prob­lem. Jew­ish Luck recounts the unique inter­twined sto­ry of two women whose chance meet­ing at the Insti­tute of Finance and Eco­nom­ics in the mid-1970s led to a life­long friend­ship based on their shared ambi­tions, dis­gust for the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and sense of humor. Once Per­e­stroi­ka and Glas­nost emerge as the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of the 1980s, Vera and Alisa’s degrees in Marx­ist-Lenin­ist eco­nomics are worth­less. Then their resource­ful­ness comes into play: Alisa refus­es to remain in Rus­sia, escap­ing to Swe­den with­out a word to her friend, and makes her suc­cess as a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions exec­u­tive; Vera forges her suc­cess in Rus­sia be­coming a busi­ness mogul and even­tu­al­ly retires to the Cay­man Islands.

Sis­ter authors Leslie Adler and Meryll worked togeth­er over three years to mesh their back­grounds in his­to­ry and psy­chol­o­gy to rep­re­sent the voic­es of these two women in a nar­ra­tive that would invite read­ers to inhab­it the lives of Vera and Alisa.