Snow in August: A Novel
Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time -- and another triumph for Pete Hamill. Brooklyn, 1947. The war veterans have come home. Jackie Robinson is about to become a Dodger. And in one close-knit working-class neighborhood, an eleven-year-old Irish Catholic boy named Michael Devlin has just made friends with a lonely rabbi from Prague. Snow in August is the story of that unlikely friendship -- and of how the neighborhood reacts to it. For Michael, the rabbi opens a window to ancient learning and lore that rival anything in Captain Marvel. For the rabbi, Michael illuminates the everyday mysteries of America, including the strange language of baseball. But like their hero Jackie Robinson, neither can entirely escape from the swirling prejudices of the time. Terrorized by a local gang of anti-Semitic Irish toughs, Michael and the rabbi are caught in an escalating spiral of hate for which there's only one way out -- a miracle....
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Community Reviews
Beautiful story of the tender friendship of 11-yr-old Michael Devlin, Irish-American altar boy, who loves baseball, comic books and adventure stories and 39-yr-old Judah Hirsch, Czech rabbi, recently arrived from Prague at the end of World War II and their private war with the Falcons, a gang of thugs terrorizing the Brooklyn neighborhood in which they live.
These unlikely friends teach each other many things.
Michael learns to speak Yiddish, scoring a discount on a suit on Orchard Street, when he puts it to use (Loved that part!). He learns that people have more similarities than differences. He learns to love learning. He learns the history of European Jews and the beauty of Prague. Most of all, he learns that keeping quiet about a crime is just as bad as committing the crime.
Judah learns to love the game of baseball. He learns to speak English (Brooklyn style!). He learns the lyrics to the popular songs of the day. Best of all, he learns that there is still goodness in a world that had just crumbled around him.
Together they privately navigate the waters of racism and bigotry while Brooklyn Dodgers draftee Jackie Robinson navigates them in the most public way.
Add in the beautiful characters of Michael's war widow mother Kate and the curmudgeonly but deeply moral parish priest, Father Heaney, and Pete Hamill's special dose of magical realism, and you have a book so beautiful that you will be crying and cheering at the same time.
These unlikely friends teach each other many things.
Michael learns to speak Yiddish, scoring a discount on a suit on Orchard Street, when he puts it to use (Loved that part!). He learns that people have more similarities than differences. He learns to love learning. He learns the history of European Jews and the beauty of Prague. Most of all, he learns that keeping quiet about a crime is just as bad as committing the crime.
Judah learns to love the game of baseball. He learns to speak English (Brooklyn style!). He learns the lyrics to the popular songs of the day. Best of all, he learns that there is still goodness in a world that had just crumbled around him.
Together they privately navigate the waters of racism and bigotry while Brooklyn Dodgers draftee Jackie Robinson navigates them in the most public way.
Add in the beautiful characters of Michael's war widow mother Kate and the curmudgeonly but deeply moral parish priest, Father Heaney, and Pete Hamill's special dose of magical realism, and you have a book so beautiful that you will be crying and cheering at the same time.