ONE FOOT IN AMERICA

An immigrant story -- of Shloime -- who comes from Galician Poland to the United States in 1923 and who learns American ways from his greenhorn days on. With his learned Talmudist father, and his own circle of Brooklyn relatives, Shloime, now Sol, finds out that he must control his cockiness, that getting a job is not the same as keeping it. As he manages to get rid of his carlocks little by little he also sheds his old country ways when he finds hunger cannot keep up with them in the new country and that being a Jew is not the curse it was back there. There are his experiences as a butcher boy, in school, in love (first with Shirley then with Beatrice), and in matchmaking for his father; there is his exposure to Communism, a chance to learn about sex (which he pretends has been successful), his courtship which is chaperoned by a horse, and the vigorous life of not only the synagogue but of the streets and the pushcarts. An understanding picture of immigrant life, the lights and the shadows, this has the feel of authentic reporting and adds a colorful panel to life in a new world.