LERMAN / AMERICAN JEWISH FICTION BOOKS
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in 1977, remains haunted by the reality of the Holocaust. She es
capes the present by creating letters to her murdered baby daugh
ter, seeing her as she might have been had she been spared.
P
e r u t z
, L
e o
.
By night under the stone bridge.
Trans, from the German
by Eric Mosbacher. New York: Arcade
P ub ,
1990. 280
p .
Events in 1598 involving Emperor Rudolf II and Mordechai
Meisl o f the Jewish Ghetto in Prague have ramifications involving
the courtiers, citizens of Prague, and Jews. The fourteen stories
as told by Meisl’s descendant, a modern day medical student, pro
vide great historical detail.
P
l a in
, B
elva
.
Blessings.
New York: Delacorte Press, 1989. 340
p .
The heroine, a successful lawyer, is forced to confront a hidden
secret from her past by a daughter she had given up at birth nine
teen years before.
R
a b o y
, I
saac
.
Jewish cowboy.
Trans, from the Yiddish by Nathaniel
Shapiro. Westfield, N.J.: Tradition Books, 1989. 297 p.
Ninety years ago the author, then an immigrant, became a cow
boy on a horse ranch in North Dakota. This autobiographical novel
was originally published in 1942.
R
a ph a e l
, D
a v id
.
The Alhambra decree.
North Hollywood, Calif.: Carmi
House, 1989. 358 p.
A well researched, historical novel that chronicles the events
leading up to the expulsion of some 150,000 Jews from the Cas
tilian city o f Segovia in 1492.
R
a ph a e l
, F
reder ic
.
After the war.
New York: Viking, 1989. 527
p.
Two Jewish boys in post-World War II England, one a refugee,
and the other showing a deference for English ways, confront each
other at prep school. Scenes move from wartime England and
occupied Germany to the creation of the State of Israel.
R
ich ler
, M
o r d e ca i
.
Solomon Gursky was here.
New York: Knopf, 1990.
557 p.
Would-be biographer, Moses Berger, is obsessed with discover
ing the mysteries of Solomon Gursky’s life, much to the detriment
of his own. The Gursky family chronology is pieced together leav
ing many mysteries unsolved and touching all levels of Canadian
society.
R
o t h
, J
o s e p h
.
The spider's web and Zipper and his father.
Trans, from
the German by John Hoare. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press,
1989. 224 p.
These two stories were originally written by the author during
the interwar years.
The spider’s web
focuses on a docile customs
official’s son, who combines obedience to orders with a bloodlust
against Jews and revolutionaries.
Zipper and his father
finds