Beatrice Cynthia Freeman (January 10, 1915 – October 22, 1988), pseudonym of Bea Feinberg, was an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

Biography

She was born in

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in 1915 to Albert C. and Sylvia Jeannette (Hack) Freeman and shortly after her birth moved to San Francisco. She dropped out of school and was tutored by her mother. She attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

at the age of fifteen. She married Herman Feinberg at the age of eighteen and had two children, Sheldon and Arlene. Her husband died in May 1986 and her daughter died in 1985. Cynthia Freeman died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in 1988, aged 73. She was Jewish.

Career

As a young girl, she began writing books but abandoned writing to pursue a career running an

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business. When poor health forced her to give up her business, she decided to dust off an old manuscript from childhood but discovered the cleaning lady had thrown it out. From memory, she rewrote the story. Freeman specialized in multi-generational stories of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

families, centering on a female protagonist. Her novel, ''No Time For Tears'', was No.10 on the

list of bestselling novels in the United States This is a list of lists of bestselling novels in the United States as determined by ''Publishers Weekly''. The list features the most popular novels of each year from 1895 through 2010. The standards set for inclusion in the lists – which, for ...

for 1981 as determined by ''

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''. Her books were translated into thirty-three languages, selling more than twenty million copies worldwide.

Bibliography

*''A World Full of Strangers'' (1975) *''Fairytales'' (1977) *''The Days of Winter'' (1978) *''Portraits'' (1979) *''Come Pour the Wine'' (1980) *''No Time For Tears'' (1981) *''Illusions of Love'' (1984) *''Seasons of the Heart'' (1986) *''The Last Princess'' (1988) *''Always and Forever'' (1990)

References

External links

Encyclopedia of Jewish Women: Cynthia Freeman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeman, Cynthia 1915 births 1988 deaths 20th-century American novelists American women novelists Deaths from cancer in California Writers from New York City Jewish American novelists 20th-century American women writers Novelists from New York (state) Jewish women writers 20th-century American Jews University of California, Berkeley alumni