How long does it take to read Beyond the Pale?
Elana Nachman/Dykewomon
Beyond the Pale by Elana Nachman/Dykewomon takes about 7 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 24 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1997. 404 pages, about 111,100 words.
15 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 12 hours 21 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 38 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Born in a Russian-Jewish settlement, Gutke Gurvich is a midwife who immigrates to New York’s Lower East Side with her partner, a woman passing as a man. Their story crosses with that of Chava Meyer, a girl who was attended by Gutke at her birth and was later orphaned during the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Chava has come to America with the family of her cousin Rose, and the two girls begin working at fourteen. As they live through the oppression and tragedies of their time, Chava and Rose grow to become lovers—and search for a community they can truly call their own. Set in Russia and New York during the early twentieth century and touching on the hallmarks of the Progressive Era—the Women’s Trade Union League, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, anarchist and socialist movements, women’s suffrage, anti-Semitism—Elana Dykewomon’s Beyond the Pale is a richly detailed and moving story, offering a glimpse into a world that is often overlooked.
Subjects: Jews, Fiction, Girls, Russian Jews, Immigrants, Lesbians