title: The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz
author:  Michelle Cameron 
description: With a powerful immediacy, Cameron's meticulously researched historical is told by Shira, an anomalous 13th-century woman raised (and educated) like a son by her widowed father. After falling in love with and marrying the legendary Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, one of her father's most promising students, Shira's beauty and education attract the attention of a French scholar, Nicholas Donin, whose demented vendetta against Judaism threatens the lives of Jews across Europe. Shira and Meir must defend their faith and their marriage from Donin, and take a stand against the anti-Semitism choking Europe, but Shira is a passive, if touching, heroine. Shira is easy to identify with, but not very interesting. Still, readers will drink in the historical detail and be quick to forgive Shira's weaknesses for the sake of other rich characters like Donin and Baruch. <i>(Sept.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: # CHAPTER THREE
  
  * * *
  
  
  “Ash, have you seen my exfoliating scrub?” Zara asked weakly, followed by a
  rattling coughing fit. My poor roomie had been bitten hard by Walker’s, but
  even bedridden she insisted on following her skin care regimen, come hell or
  high water.
  
  
  I hustled into the kitchen where she was huddled in front of the open fridge,
  feebly digging through apples and Diet Cokes. She looked terrible, the circles
  under her eyes so dark her face seemed bruised, and the rest of her skin
  sickly pale. Her dark-brown hair hung in sweat-soaked hanks down her back,
  stray strands plastered to her face.
  
  
  All the exfoliant in the world wasn’t going to help.
  
  
  “Zara, get back into bed!” I said. Putting an arm around her shoulders, I led
  her back to the twin bed across from mine. “You can exfoliate later, okay?”
  
  
  Zara lay down, coughed again, then smiled weakly up at me.
  
  
  “You’ll find it for me, though, right?”
  
  
  I held up my right hand and crossed my heart.
  
  
  “By the time you’re ready 