Mary Glickman grew up Catholic in Massachusetts, but now lives in South Carolina, where she practices Judaism.

Also an author, Glickman detailed her transformation during the South Coast Jewish Speaker Series on March 5 at the Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

Glickman never found herself connected to the Catholic faith shared by her parents and siblings. She fondly recalled receiving weekly Bible stories for kids in the mail, but always gravitated towards stories from the Old Testament. As she grew older, she discovered Jewish authors and writers, and soon decided to convert to Judaism, a process she fully completed when she married her husband.

"I investigated Buddhism and other religions, but I always came back to the Tanakh," she said of the Hebrew Bible.

Around the same time, the lifelong New Englander set her eyes on the south. In 1987, she traveled to Spain on sabbatical, but upon returning to the United States, relocated to Charleston, South Carolina for its European influences and warm climate.

As an outsider, Glickman didn’t feel comfortable portraying southern culture in writing, although for many years, she had wanted to develop that setting for a book. She didn’t want to fall into clichéd literary traps like authors that struggled to accurately capture southern speech and values.

“Southern speech is really amazing. You hear expressions you never hear anywhere else,” Glickman said. “When a woman breaks up with her man, where else can you hear ‘I did everything but hang out on the cross for that man?’”

It wasn’t until Glickmann had lived in South Carolina on and off for nearly 20 years that she learned to mimic the southern way of life in her prose.

"The narrative sounds like a very southern experience," she said, explaining that she writes with the goal of telling a story as though it is being told on the back porch or around a campfire. She said she imagines the voice of Morgan Freeman telling the story.

Her books touch upon issues including racism, identity, and Judaism. She first book, "Home in the Morning," published in 2010, is set during the 1960s civil rights movement. It follows the lives of four Jewish and African American characters through a period of major social change in the country.

Since then, she’s published several other books, including "One More River," "Marching to Zion," and "An Undisturbed Peace." Glickman now lives in South Carolina permanently, and is working on a new novel.