JOEY

There is a warmth and sincerity in this book of Joey Levine's life of his family, of the Jewish section -- Los Angeles' Brooklyn Avenue. Here are the Levines, the Samsons, the Kantors, the Abrams, as they have migrated far West and brought their ingrained customs and family ways with them. Joey learns to fear life and loving early, succumbs to his feeling that people stink but knows a certain faith in his Grandmother Silverberg, in loyal Molly. He breaks with his father over a profession; refusing college, he works in a moving picture theater, learns to fly. With the coming of the war and the killing of his father's family in Poland, he joins the Canadian Air Force, is wounded abroad, invalided out and returns to marry Molly. But even then the doubts and fears make him resentful and angry when Molly becomes pregnant, and in a last scrap, realizes that faith and love are necessary. Characters and incidents that ring true, a love and respect for Jewish emotional patterns -- these combine into satisfactory novel.