Among the Living
A Novel
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4.4 • 13 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“Jonathan Rabb is one of my favorite writers, a highly gifted, heart-wise storyteller if ever there was one. What a powerful, moving book.” —David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author
A moving novel about a Holocaust survivor’s unconventional journey back to a new normal in 1940s Savannah, Georgia
In late summer 1947, thirty-one-year-old Yitzhak Goldah, a camp survivor, arrives in Savannah to live with his only remaining relatives. They are Abe and Pearl Jesler, older, childless, and an integral part of the thriving Jewish community that has been in Georgia since the founding of the colony. There, Yitzhak discovers a fractured world, where Reform and Conservative Jews live separate lives--distinctions, to him, that are meaningless given what he has been through. He further complicates things when, much to the Jeslers' dismay, he falls in love with Eva, a young widow within the Reform community. When a woman from Yitzhak's past suddenly appears--one who is even more shattered than he is--Yitzhak must choose between a dark and tortured familiarity and the promise of a bright new life.
Set amid the backdrop of America's postwar south, Among the Living grapples with questions of identity and belonging, and steps beyond the Jewish experience as it situates Yitzhak's story during the last gasp of the Jim Crow era. Yitzhak begins to find echoes of his own experience in the lives of the black family who work for the Jeslers--an affinity he does not share with the Jeslers themselves. This realization both surprises and convinces Yitzhak that his choices are not as clear-cut as he might have thought.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rabb (The Berlin Trilogy) delves into the struggle to rebuild a life after unfathomable loss in this moving post-war novel. Yitzhak Goldah arrives in Savannah, Georgia, in 1947, two years after being freed from the Nazi camps where he lost his entire immediate family and his fianc . He has come to the US to live with Abe and Pearl Jesler, his only remaining family, who almost immediately begin calling him Ike to Americanize his name. At just thirty-one, Ike is eager to overcome the trauma he experienced during the war memories that are shared to great effect via flashback but finds himself overwhelmed by the expectations of those around him. People stumble over their words, hesitate to ask questions, and use taking care of him as a way to prove their own goodness. But when Ike meets and falls in love with Eva, who comes from Savannah's Reform community with which the Jesler's Conservative community clashes, he is suddenly thrust into a longstanding feud between the Jewish communities a conflict that seems ridiculous to him. His efforts to rebuild his own life are further muddied when the fianc he believed to be dead shows up on the Jesler's doorstep. Although some of the drama and tension falls flat, this is an engaging exploration of what happens after unthinkable violence and suffering, and how people struggle both to overcome what they experience directly and make sense of experiences they learn of second-hand.
Customer Reviews
Among the Living
There is an incredible beauty to the characters who start out as if they were going to be stereotypes and then surprisingly develop unexpected depth and texture! A wonderful story and a gift of historical fiction