The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn: A Novel (Library of Modern Jewish Literature) - Softcover

Gerber, Merrill Joan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815608926 ISBN 13: 9780815608929

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 2007

Synopsis

With T<i>he Victory Gardens of Brooklyn,</i> Merrill Joan Gerber demonstrates yet again her talent for pure and natural prose that penetrates the depths of human emotion. Her new novel illuminates the lives of three generations of women belonging to a Jewish American family in New York. Arriving from Poland at the turn of the century, sisters Rachel and Rose discover their fates on New York's Lower East Side. Later, Rachel's daughters, Ava, Musetta, and Gilda, live the passionate drama of their family's destiny as two wars rage in the world around them. In peace and war, the men they love bring them both ecstasy and bitter grief. Musetta's daughters, Issa and Iris, carry the story to its poignant close as the Second World War ends. With a delicate touch yet piercing insight, Gerber explores the yearnings, loves, and struggles of women who try to adapt the Jewish rituals of the "old country" to the realities of the new world.

About this title

About the Author

<b>Merrill Joan Gerber</b> is a prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Her novel, <i>Tbe Kingdom of Brooklyn,</i> won the Ribalow Award from <i>Hadassah Magazine.</i> She teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology.

Reviews

Rich in historic detail, this boilerplate immigrant family epic focuses on three Jewish sisters struggling to make something of their lives over 40 years of births, deaths, work, domestic abuse and two world wars. Gerber (The Kingdom of Brooklyn ) focuses on the passions and cross-cultural currents whirling around Ava, Musetta and Gilda, the three daughters of Rachel, a Polish Jew who arrives on New York's Lower East Side in 1906. Rachel, still in thrall to Old World ways, brings little Ava with her when she confronts her philandering husband, Nathan. Nathan ditches the family, only to appear decades later after Ava marries Len, a smalltime Prohibition-era gangster. Ava's younger sisters, Musetta and Gilda, lock horns over everything from boys and a pet dog to war volunteer efforts. Unfortunately, the early 20th-century immigrant streets of New York are heavily traveled, and there's little to distinguish this novel from the crowd.

Edition details

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815608926
• ISBN 13: 9780815608929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 406