An intimate story of fortitude and finding independence.
At the turn of the 20th century, a young Lithuanian woman flees the Pale of Settlement in Lithuania to begin a new life in New York in Silbert’s (Why Bad Grades Happen to Good Kids, 2007) tragic, affecting Jewish-immigrant narrative.
Aware of the anti-Semitic mood on the streets of Glubokoye, Lithuania, Boshka’s father sacrifices his calling as a rabbi to sell pots and buckets—a means of accruing sufficient funds to secure his daughter’s passage to the safety of the New World. Eighteen-year-old Boshka finds herself on a train station platform in Vilna, waiting to board a train to Hamburg, where she’ll set sail for New York. As her family exchanges final goodbyes, they’re approached by a woman from their hometown who asks Boshka to carry an embroidered feather pillow to her son, Nathan, in New Rochelle, N.Y. Boshka agrees and finds comfort in the pillow throughout her arduous journey. In the Receiving Hall on Ellis Island, she’s given the name Elizabeth (later shortened to Bessie), her birth name being difficult for the American tongue. Bessie travels to the Upper West Side to stay with her sister Lillian but rejects the offer when she discovers that Lillian’s wealthy husband intends to employ her as a maid. She instead goes to live with family friends in Washington Heights, in the northern part of Manhattan. Eager to forge a profession for herself in the city, she first takes on work at a tough Lower East Side factory before working at a millinery store and at an outlet that sells paint and wallpaper. Her position, juxtaposed with the snobbery of high society, allows her a key viewpoint on the destitution of Manhattan’s immigrant slums. Romance finally enters Bessie’s life when she finds Nathan to deliver his mother’s pillow, yet this tale primarily remains a mournful look at the struggle of a resilient Jewish diaspora punctuated with personal tragedy and loss. These events—based on conversations the author had with her mother and grandmother—are presented with an agreeable fluidity and ease. Though engaging, the narrative thins somewhat toward the end, becoming more a chronology of tragic events that neglects to consider the ongoing emotional evolution of the principal characters. Despite this flaw, however, the author’s storytelling skills offer laid-back prose that will convince readers to care about Bessie from the start.
An intimate story of fortitude and finding independence.Pub Date: July 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0895442031
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Strong Learning Publications
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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