THE OTHER

Markowitz’s novel follows two men separated by generations but both facing racism and violence in a rural community.

In 2023, Charlie Levenson has just purchased the old lock-tender’s house along a quaint canal not far from Princeton, New Jersey. With the help of his son Ben, Charlie starts to fix up the dilapidated property, imagining how much his late wife Zoya would have hated it. The welcome from his new neighbors is anything but warm—a gruff stranger gives Charlie a cryptic warning: “Bad things have been known to happen here. You never can tell when bad things might happen again.” In 1933, Abe Dubinski lives in the same house and works as the canal’s last lock-tender before the advent of rail transit. Abe and his family meet Helmut Fischer, a young man who has just arrived in America from Germany and expresses nothing but aggression and menace to his Jewish neighbors. In the present day, Charlie witnesses a dangerous fire and sees a protest explode into violence, bringing him once again in contact with the mysterious stranger and setting him on a scavenger hunt for clues about the man’s identity and his connections with a local right-wing militia—which may have also played a role in his wife’s death. Back in 1933, Abe struggles to keep his family together as Helmut and a group of young Nazis camp out along the canal, targeting the lock-tender’s family. Markowitz’s parallel narratives touch upon several fascinating ideas, including the reach of Nazism—even in rural America—during WWII, the lasting impacts of the January 6 insurrection on today’s world, and the similarities between two time periods each burdened with an oppressive sense of dread. The inclusion of Zoya’s ghostly figure and her own story of coming to America from Iran provides another layer of texture and perspective while also endearing the grieving Charlie to readers. While the two stories share intriguing thematic connections, they can sometimes clash—especially as Charlie’s story ventures into tropes more common of a mystery or thriller. While the alternating timelines fail to cohere into a flowing narrative, Markowitz still offers plenty of sympathetic characters and engaging questions.

Insightful perspectives on historical and contemporary bigotry, despite some awkward juxtapositions.