Description
Book SynopsisIn St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World 17 years before. The rebbe''s former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of gold in the streets evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday''s game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers.It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch''s sizable bets; Barasch''s lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires
Trade Review
"First-rate fiction: reminiscent . . . of such precursors as Sholem Aleichem, but possessed of distinctive individual strengths and firmly rooted in its characters strange new land and even stranger adventures." -- Kirkus Reviews; "Hoffman fashions a haunting, bittersweet story of exile, dislocation and redemption in the Promised Land...Robust humor, insight into human nature and an absence of sentimentality augment Hoffmans storytelling skills." -- Publishers Weekly starred review
