​Living with her Babby after her parents’ death, 10-year-old Dinah Ash is invited to train at Leningrad’s legendary Vaganova Ballet School. In the world of elite dance, she works hard, falls in love, and weathers the Soviet Union’s ubiquitous antisemitism, but despite an impressive talent, she quickly learns that dancers of her “profile” don’t make prima ballerinas.

Love of Leningrad, ballet, friends, family, and books sustain Dinah until history intervenes. The Soviet war in Afghanistan, the rise of perestroika, and a re-emergence of Nazism leave her vulnerable and exposed. Realizing escape is her only option, she applies for refugee status in America.

Dinah’s adjustment to life in the US is a test as much of her identity as of her perseverance. Is who she is something Dinah can forge on her own? Or is identity imposed by upbringing, public opinion, and the myths of our cultures? As Dinah struggles with the questions of religion, race, and worth, her choices and the people she encounters will determine whether the dream of a better life can survive the weight of the past.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE LIGHT OF SEVEN DAYS
“In River Adams' bracing and lyrical debut, The Light of Seven Days, a ballerina from the Soviet Union escapes to Philadelphia, a land of McDonalds and RiteAids, and the questions she finds: What is it like to flee from radical extremism? What does it mean to be white? To be American? To believe in God? could not be larger or more relevant. Adams’ novel reminds us that the eyes of the immigrant and the artist alike can make the familiar seem strange and the strange familiar.”
— Kevin Birmingham, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses

​"As it spans decades and oceans, the novel asks questions of belonging and culture, inviting a reconsideration of Soviet, Soviet Jewish, and American
Jewish identities through a recent immigrant’s eyes. Adams’ lyrical prose paints a lush, vivid, and imagistic portrait of the world. . .Careful aesthetic
​intention is evident in each sentence. . .A quiet, artfully rendered story of the beauty and difficulty of coming-of-age between cultures, in the shadow of history.  ...luminous prose." 
-- Kirkus Reviews

"Adams’s affecting insight into their adopted home and the Russia they left is well worth the troika ride. . .[a] bracing debut."
— Publishers Weekly

"River Adams provides an intimate and nuanced exploration of religion, nationality and personal identity in their impactful debut novel." 
-- Katherine Ouellette, WBUR
​We live in the era of dialogue, an era Leonard Swidler helped birth. The son of a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant and an Irish Catholic, he set out as a boy to become an intellectual and a saint. There Must Be YOU explores how and why this aspiring Norbertine priest emerged to become the Professor Swidler of today: a teacher, a reformer of the church, a preeminent feminist, and one of the fathers of interreligious dialogue. He argues passionately that dialogue is a matter of more than peacemaking, but of living an authentically human life. Len's journey begins at the start of the Great Depression, and represents the very turmoil and growth of American modernity: our search for faith, our struggle with diversity, and our fight for social justice. Written by Len's colleague and friend, this book offers the reader education, inspiration, and challenge through the remarkable stories of Len's life, conversations with him, and excursions into the history of the world that made him who he is. We turn the last page having laughed with Len and argued with him, and having dialogued more deeply with our own lives.
PRAISE FOR THERE MUST BE YOU
''River Adams has written a beautiful and thought-provoking intellectual and spiritual portrait of my dear former colleague, Leonard Swidler, whose efforts to become 'an intellectual and a saint' have affected the world of scholarship and quest for peace in enormous yet humbling ways. This wonderful narrative unfolds with the poetic and ambiguous force of grace as Adams offers insights into Swidler's precious world of dialogue, which, for him, has all the relational force of Buber's understanding of what it means to transform others into the infinite and infinitesimal you.''
--Lewis R. Gordon, author of Existence in Black

''This creative, well-written, and unique biography is a spiritual gift to our times, a teaching tool, and an introduction to one of the great thinkers of the day. It is Len Swidler's biography, but it is also a cultural history of the era, and a call to all of us to revisit our religious-intellectual roots. There can be no greater or more necessary intellectual challenge than that in this mercurial time.''
--Joan Chittister, author of Following the Path

''This is a stimulating biography of a leading Catholic theologian and teacher who has influenced global religious thought on interfaith dialogue. . . . Swidler's intellectual journey has been a continuous development in conversation with other leading Catholic intellectuals of the last half century, and thus we also are introduced to these leading figures and their thoughts, through Leonard Swidler's life. This is a page-turner that inspirers the reader to read on to complete the journey.''
--Rosemary Radford Ruether, author of Sexism and God Talk

''Leonard Swidler has been a fixture of American religious, Catholic, and intellectual life for almost fifty years since his founding of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Swidler ranks dialogue among the supreme values of this world; his brilliant formulation of its rules amount to an implicit religious anthropology. This splendid book uniquely folds 'live' conversation with Len into the narrative of past events to create a personal dialogue. The book is moving and irresistible.''
--Roger Haight, author of Spirituality Seeking Theology