The Takeaway Men: A Novel

by Meryl Ain

Overview

With the cloud of the Holocaust still looming over them, twin sisters Bronka and Johanna Lubinski and their parents arrive in the US from a Displaced Persons Camp. In the years after World War II, they experience the difficulties of adjusting to American culture as well as the burgeoning fear of the Cold War. Years later, the discovery of a former Nazi hiding in their community brings the Holocaust out of the shadows. As the girls get older, they start to wonder about their parents’ pasts, and they begin to demand answers. But it soon becomes clear that those memories will be more difficult and painful to uncover than they could have anticipated. Poignant and haunting, The Takeaway Men explores the impact of immigration, identity, prejudice, secrets, and lies on parents and children in mid-twentieth-century America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684630479
Publisher:	SparkPress
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	450,031
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Meryl Ain's articles and essays have appeared in Huffington Post, The Jewish Week, The New York Times, and Newsday, and at MariaShriver.com, among other outlets. In 2014, she coauthored the award-winning book The Living Memories Project: Legacies That Last, and in 2016 she wrote a companion workbook, My Living Memories Project Journal. She is both a student and teacher of history, as well as a school administrator and researcher. She holds a BA from Queens College, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an EdD from Hofstra University. She lives in New York with her husband, Stewart. They have three married sons and six grandchildren. This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

2020 Best Book Awards Winner in Fiction: Historical
2020 American Fiction Awards: Winner in Historical Fiction
2020 Canadian Book Club Awards Winner in Fiction
“17 Books to Read Before the End of Summer”—Buzzfeed

“The author’s tale is sensitively composed, a thoughtful exploration into the perennially thorny issues of religious identity, assimilation, and the legacy of suffering.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Ain builds a layered world of many different characters to create a complex, difficult, and well-researched novel around the identity of the Jewish community following the Holocaust and the problems and debates it faced.”
—Booklist

“A wise and sensitive work of historical fiction...ties in many themes: stories of Righteous Gentiles, a suspected Nazi living in the neighborhood under a new identity and working in a kosher deli, the stigma then of mental illness, questions of defining Jewish identity and reacting to evil, and the popular culture of the ’50s.”
—The Jewish Week

“All too often, books focus on what happens to people persecuted by the Nazis during the war, but I rarely find a novel that tells the story of what happens to a family after liberation . . . I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction…”
—Readers’ Favorite, 5 Star Review

“At a time when the darkness of the Holocaust is being whitewashed, Meryl Ain’s remarkable debut novel illuminates the postwar Jewish American landscape like a truth-seeking torch. An emotionally rich and lovingly told saga of survivors, with great sensitivity to what was lost, buried, and resurrected.”
—Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible

“In The Takeaway Men, Meryl Ain tells a gripping story of lives intertwined and shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust and its aftermath. With sensitivity and compassion she makes her characters come alive and remain in our heads and our hearts long after the novel ends. A powerful read!”
—Francine Klagsbrun, author of Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel

“An exceptional and vibrant first novel . . . a portrait of the power of love and the ability of family to embrace and heal.”
—TBR News Media

From the Publisher

2020-05-22
A Jewish family that survived the Holocaust begins life anew in the United States but remains haunted by the past in this historical novel.

Aron and Dyta Lubinski escape the terror of Nazi tyranny in Poland and spend four years living in a displaced persons camp in Warteplatz, once a summer camp for Hitler Youth. While there, Dyta gives birth to fraternal twins Johanna and Bronka. They relocate to New York City and are given a home Aron’s relatives Izzy and Faye. The two New Yorkers also offer Aron employment at one of their bakeries. But despite the Lubinskis’ good fortune, they are haunted by the traumas they suffered in their native Poland, especially Dyta’s familial past. Now answering to the Americanized name Judy, she shamefully hides her father’s role in the abuse of Polish Jews just as Aron zealously attempts to shield his daughters from the weight of the hardships the couple shouldered: “Although he was grateful to be alive and in the United States at this moment, the pain and horror his own family had endured was never far from his mind. But he had already vowed to himself that he would not inflict his story on his children.” Ain poignantly captures the painful paradox of the Lubinskis’ new life—safer and more prosperous than ever before, they can still never outrun a dark history that doggedly follows them like a shadow. When a neighbor spots Rudolf Schmidt, a former Nazi guard from Auschwitz and cruel murderer of Jews, Aron and Judy are again reminded of the long reach of the past, which their daughters are increasingly curious about. The author’s tale is sensitively composed, a thoughtful exploration into the perennially thorny issues of religious identity, assimilation, and the legacy of suffering. But Ain’s prose is plainly clear at best and earnestly lachrymose at other times. She also overindulges in didactic commentary—she strains too laboriously to draw a moral lesson for her readers.

A powerfully touching story sometimes prone to sentimental sermonizing.

Kirkus Reviews