Problems are no problem for adrenaline junkie Fish Kirschenbaum, mild-mannered wedding manager extraordinaire for Ateres Fradl Hall. Whether it's brides and grooms with cold feet, wedding money gone missing, or photoshoots imploding with family politics, Fish has seen-and dealt with-it all, without breaking a sweat. But when new boss and old nemesis David Silver arrives on the scene, it's Fish's own problems that may prove to be the hall's undoing. 

Claiming that Ateres Fradl is failing, David issues an ultimatum: improve business by summer or close forever. To save his hall, Fish goes to war-but with so much bad blood still lingering between him and David, is success really all he's fighting for? As past and present collide, and his life, relationships, and hall begin to unravel, Fish must race the clock and his own demons-and, increasingly, everyone else's-before he loses everything. 

The stakes have never been higher. The stage is set, the band poised to play as Ateres Fradl hurtles toward a cataclysmic engagement. Duck sauce will be spilled, Shidduchmania unleashed, and true faces revealed-but when nothing and no one is quite who they seem, it's up to Fish and his unlikely troupe of feuding secretaries, a thief, a cook, Tzedakah Yankel and Kleinbogen the Chesed Vigilante to champion their hall and their clients, and save the world ...

... that is, if they don't set it on fire first. 


Etka Gitel Schwartz
is a regular contributor to Binah magazine. She especially enjoys writing and researching historical fiction, but happily wandered out of the genre for this romp. She lives with her family in New Jersey.