When Deena decides to marry Daniel, an Orthodox Jew, her father, a Hasidic scholar, opposes the marriage for Kabbalistic reasons: the sum of the numbers assigned to the Hebrew letters in their names equals the numerical value of the Hebrew word for "pain." Yet the marriage appears blessed.When Daniel brings home the new temp from work, a young southerner in training for the Miss America pageant, and her best friend, the couple and the two women form an immediate and unlikely foursome. But soon cracks begin to appear in the foundation of Deena and Daniel's marriage, and the values that Deena grew up with are thrown into question, along with the very notion of "home."Giving Up America charts the conflict between the religious and the secular, between Hasidic and Orthodox practices, between being single and being married. It painfully juxtaposes the inner desires, expectations, and imaginings of its characters with the workaday realities and choices we all face. Read Less