HERMAN HAD TWO DAUGHTERS

by Zelda Popkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 1968

Herman Weiss two daughters were Colia and Jessie, Jessie two years younger and five years smarter than Cella. They grew up in the ghetto immigrant section of small town Grady's Mills... the place called ""The Hill"" which teemed with merchants, gossip and ritual. It was a kosher landscape. The narrator, Sam Rosenbaum relates the two girls' life story and his, for they were three that escaped from that restricting world: Jessie to become Jessie White, well known playwright and semi-bohemian, a renegade from her background who exploits it in her terse autobiographical dramas, Colia to become Mrs. Joe Sloan (ex-Slomowitz), the portrait of a Park Avenue kosher housewife. And Sam to be the wanderer, a journalist. But the author is really writing about the enormous generation gap between the immigrant merchants and their professional sons and daughters as the mores of the new land take hold. Mother Ida times her death well and is mourned by her neighbors: ""the kochleffel is gone."" Herman is less fortunate...he lingers to become a burden and is more or less abandoned. It's no one's fault. The ethics and credo of a way of life are out-dated. Mrs. Popkin writes knowledgeably about cause and effect, education, the way years, and her characters are all human and very sympathetic. Large scale sensibility...a very nice book.

Pub Date: April 12, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION