The Cobbler's Tale

Neil Perry Gordon has taken the story of his family's travels from Eastern Europe to a better life in America.  He has based the bones of the story on facts and created some suspense around the reality of bringing a family to the new world.

This novel is the story of a young Jewish immigrant, Pincus Potasznik, a cobbler who leaves his pregnant wife Clara and children behind in Eastern Europe’s Galicia region in search of a better life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  It is a year or so before the first great war begins and Potasznik leaves his wife, mother-in-law and children behind.  The Rabbi advices him that going to America will be good for his family and that he also should start a Landsman Society of Krzywcza,  in New York for other villagers who will travel there to help them get settled.

On the boat to America, he meets a man who will become his lifelong friend, Jakob Adler.  Without knowing it Jakob worked for the crime boss in Warsaw and is escaping after running into trouble back in Poland. He becomes a good friend to Pincus, helping him get ahead in New York, but also becoming a partner-in-crime.  HE changes the immigrant's story forever.  It is interesting how each occurrence in your life and alter the direction you were going.

It takes Pincus four years to return to Krzywcza to bring his wife, Clara and their children to New York.  He has been unaware of the turmoil and hardships they have faced as a result of the war.  Also there is a side story of Moshe, the eldest son, being recognized as a tzaddik, one of the 36 righteous individuals that Kabbalah believes live at any one time. 

Though this for the most part moves at a slow pace of everyday life, switching between chapters of Pincus' life in America getting settled and setting up his business and Landsman Society and then Clara and the kids living in a small shtetl as war approaches, there are scenes interspersed that create a sense of tension and pick up the pace of the story.  Just when you may say I have read enough, something grabs your attention and you want to find out how it will end.

I listened to this novel as an audible book.  Read by Michael Fischbein, it also seems that he is reading very slowly and clearly, enunciating and seemed to make the story also drag, until he would read one of the more suspenseful sections and the story would be more interesting.  you could almost hear the suspenseful music in your head as you reached those parts of the book.