A coming-of-age classic about two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, this "profound and universal" (The Wall Street Journal) story of faith, family, tradition, and assimilation remains deeply pertinent today.

"Works of this caliber should be occasion for singing in the streets and shouting from the rooftops." —Chicago Tribune
It's the spring of 1944 and fifteen-year-olds Reuven...

On the eve of World War II Egon Schneider--a gallant and successful Jewish doctor, son of two world-famous naturalists--escapes Germany to an uncertain future across the sea. Settling into the unfamiliar rhythms of upper Manhattan, he finds solace among a tight-knit group of fellow immigrants, tenacious men and women drawn together as much by their differences as by their memories of the world they left behind. They each suffer degradations and triumphs...

It was a wonderful summer, a great memory, the kind of love everybody ought to have. It changed my life -- or almost did -- and I think about it more than I should, but that was a long time ago. In the summer of 1955, Madison Lee "Bobo" Murphy was a waiter at the Catskills' Pine hill inn, where the eccentric Avrum Feldman became his unlikely friend. A rural Southerner on his exciting first journey north, Bobo learned from Avrum that each life is marked...