THE WEDDING BAND

Told by Alexandra, the eldest daughter of Meyer Davidov, a Polish Jew, and Eleanor Harper, a gentile from an orphan asylum, this views a mixed marriage with an overwhelming sense of its irony, drama and the life bondage of a ""cat and victim"". For Mama gives way before Meyer's animality, vigor and foreign ways, is tormented by her adopted Jewish life and almost broken by Bubbeh, Meyer's mother, who comes to Cleveland from Poland to condemn and linger in her death. She is completely shattered by her infatuation for the smooth, correct Alexander Rossiter who uses her only to walk away with every bit of the family's money and savings. Her closing years reveal to Alexander, (Lexie) the pattern in its early perfection, its later tangling and its final destruction -- which is symbolized by the wedding band she inherits. Pathetic -- and palpitating -- this effects human -- and touching -- portraits and conflicts, and amplifies the prospect presented in the short stories of The Passionate Shepherd (1958 -- and another publisher).