A moving family tale with a strong cast that readers will love.
An indomitable man guides his Jewish family through the horrors of World War II in Eastern Europe in this debut novel.
Readers meet Elazar Gershovich in 1922. But the backstory is that, in 1903, the Gershoviches were living a comfortable life in Kishinev, Moldova, when the Christians attacked the Jews in a pogrom. Little Elazar was thrown from a window, his brother Hershel had his leg broken, their mother was gang-raped, and two siblings were murdered. The family fled north to Kalarash, Moldova, and started over. Now, Elazar is an accomplished violinist in his musical family (Papa loves the accordion, Mama prefers the clarinet, and Hershel plays percussion). Yet the protagonist longs to test his wings. But first, what he really wants is a girlfriend. He becomes smitten with Ita Kaplan, a winsome young artist from a wealthy family. Unfortunately, she plans to join her three sisters in Paris, and France is too daunting for Elazar. Then there is Mariam Gabashvili, but, since she’s not Jewish, Papa forbids the match. Soon, plans change for Ita (because of the political landscape), and so she marries Elazar and they have two children, Rivka and Ira. When the war comes, Elazar and his family and Hershel and his wife—their two sons are conscripted by the Russians—flee east ahead of the German bombardment. After a monumental trek—on foot, by train, and by boat—they end up in Uzbekistan for the duration of the war. Lice are a constant scourge, and these pests are probably responsible for a family member contracting typhus. At war’s end, Elazar and his clan make their way back to Moldova and the bombed-out ruins. But will the treasure that Elazar buried in the backyard in Kalarash and the violin he hid in the cellar still be there? Will there be music as these irrepressible survivors try to rebuild their lives?
Turner and Gorbaty’s engaging debut novel is promising and timely, considering what is going on in the main protagonist’s part of the world. Elazar, the narrator, carries the story and will win readers over right from the start. There is subtle humor in his desperate search for his dream girl, equal parts idealism and lust. And Ita is a surprise. Readers will expect that coming from an affluent family, she would not be able to handle adversity. But when the world comes crashing down, she is by no means a quitter. She is in fact a resourceful mother and loving wife through thick and thin (mostly thin). And Elazar is forever the optimist because positivity costs nothing, and pessimism is pointless, at least in his eyes. A scene involving the family member fighting typhus is beautiful and poignant (Dickens would approve). Of course, in war everyone suffers, and one would hope that the misery would bring common understanding and forbearance. But not in Moldova. In the Kalarash shtetl, a simple code evolves. In a precarious universe, you live every day as if it’s your last, so “one: have some fun, two: try to do some good, and three: don’t screw anyone over too badly.” Surely, there are more exalted codes of conduct, but these people are not given to moral preening.
A moving family tale with a strong cast that readers will love.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9798218267544
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Bessarabian Publishers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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