Piercy, Marge, (He, She and It [hc, Knopf, 1991] 978-0679404088 [pb, Del Rey, 2016]) 978-1785033797 [Piercy here leans heavily into cyberpunk thriller conventions, utilizing data piracy, corporate espionage, and biologically enhanced assassins. The story centers on Tikva, an independent, environmentally stable Jewish “free town” defending itself against predatory global corporations. To protect the community from illegal corporate raids, a scientist creates Yod, a highly advanced, illegal cyborg. This futuristic thriller plot is directly parallel to the 17th-century Jewish folk story of the Golem of Prague, who was similarly created outside the law to protect Jews from violent pogroms.
United States · Fiction author
Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy (born 1936, Detroit, and residing since 1971 on Cape Cod/Wellfleet, MA) [Born into a working-class family during the Great Depression, Piercy grew up in a segregated Detroit neighborhood with a Presbyterian father and an observant Jewish mother who instilled her love of poetry. After a childhood battle with rheumatic fever that turned her into a voracious reader, she became the first person in her family to attend college, earning a scholarship to the University of Michigan and later completing an M.A. at Northwestern University. During the 1960s, Piercy became heavily involved in civil rights, anti-war movements, and New Left organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). By 1969, she fully committed herself to the women’s rights movement. Her prolific literary career spans over 15 novels and 15 collections of poetry. Her work is celebrated for its deep intersection of Marxism, feminism, environmentalism, and Jewish traditions. She is widely known for her seminal feminist utopian/dystopian novel Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), her World War II bestseller Gone to Soldiers (1987), and her cyberpunk novel He, She and It (1991). She continues to write and manage Leapfrog Press alongside her husband, novelist Ira Wood. While she is not a traditional mystery or thriller writer, she frequently utilizes crime motifs, illegal acts, and genre thriller elements as primary narrative drivers in her Jewish fiction. Rather than writing standard “whodunits,” Piercy reframes crime through a political, feminist, and historical lens, exploring how marginalized individuals—particularly Jewish women—interact with lawlessness to survive or fight for justice.
Piercy, Marge, (Gone to Soldiers [hc, Random House, 1990]) 978-0517023396 [pb, Simon & Schuster, 2015] 978-1501118760 [In her sweeping World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, crime is redefined by the context of the Holocaust, where survival and morality require breaking the law. The novel follows multiple characters, including Jewish women struggling with the horrors of the war. Piercy tracks a Jewish heroine embedded in the French Resistance. In this context, “crime”—forgery, smuggling, sabotage, and assassination—is transformed into a heroic narrative driver. Piercy explores the psychological toll of adopting a criminal, clandestine lifestyle to combat state-sponsored genocide.
Piercy, Marge, (The Longings of Women [hc, Fawcett, 1994]) 978-0449909072 [pb, Open Road Media, 2018] 978-1504051880 [Though not strictly focused on Jewish identity, The Longings of Women functions as a domestic noir/psychological thriller. One of the three main protagonists is Leila Landsman, a Jewish academic and researcher specializing in abused women. Leila becomes deeply entangled in investigating a notorious, highly publicized murder case involving a young woman accused of killing her husband. The novel uses the architecture of a true-crime thriller to dissect how the legal system and criminal acts intersect with the domestic entrapment of women.
Piercy, Marge, (Braided Lives [hc, Simon & Schuster, 1982]) 978-0671438340 [pb, PM Press, 2013] 978-1604864427 [The semi-autobiographical protagonist, Jill, is a dark, fiercely independent Jewish intellectual with “Detroit street smarts” who acts as a sometime thief to get by in a repressive 1950s landscape. The book also intensely treats the “crime” of seeking illegal abortions during that era.
Piercy, Marge, (Sex Wars: A Jewish Immigrant’s Epic Pursuit of the American Dream in Post-Civil War New York [hc, William Morrow, 2005] 978-0060789831 [pb, William Morrow Paperbacks, 2006] 978-0060789879 [Piercy follows Freydeh, a Jewish immigrant builder in Gilded Age New York, navigating a world of economic survival, shifting legalities, and the criminalization of women’s health and autonomy.
Confirming her connection to the genre, Piercy contributed to the anthology Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds (2022). This collection specifically explores the complexities of Jewish identity through the lens of regional warfare, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and greedy stereotypes. See the reference under Kenneth Wishnia, editor of the anthology, below in this bibliography. - Google/AI]