More than the mementos or the professional documents being gathered up for archives at the University of Southern California, Elaine finds herself opening memories of her childhood spent in Jewish Boyle Heights decades earlier.
Every box lid she lifts takes her back to the small apartment with her Zayde, her parents, her fraternal twin sister Barbara and her younger sisters Audrey and Harriet. Nearby were her Uncle Leo, who owned a bookstore in Hollywood; his wife Sonya, and her Aunt Pearl, who scandalized her family by divorcing a two-timing husband and refusing to move back home.
The book takes Elaine from her early childhood in the 1920s, through school in the 1930s and college in the 1940s into her retirement from her legal practice, where she had a reputation as a relentless defender of the rights of the poor and the vulnerable.
As she grows up, the world becomes dark with Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe, with the deaths of high school friends who leave for Canada to sign up to fight with the British forces.
She begins to understand the complexities of her parents' lives as her contemporary self reflects on her memories. Her father lived in the shadow of a golden older brother who died in World War I and her mother was forced to give up her dreams of being an actress to get married and have children.
Woven throughout is the relationship Elaine had with her twin sister, Barbara. While Elaine was the bright scholar, destined to do great things in the world, Barbara was fun-loving and charismatic. While Barbara was uncertain about her future, she knew she could not live the life expected of her. One evening, after a fight with Elaine, she vanishes.
The mystery of what happened to Barbara overlays this memoir of a lost time. To say more would be to get into spoiler territory.
If you like sentimental stories of a lost past or if you like stories about the once vibrant Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, you will probably like this book. If you're looking for a book with strong Jewish themes or content, you won't find it here.
The book is well-written and researched. The characters are distinctive and likeable.
To get a flavor of what Boyle Heights and its famous Breed Street Shul, take a look at the video below.
The Author: Janice Steinberg
According to Steinberg's blog, "The character was a keenly observant woman who worked in a Hollywood bookstore; unnamed, she was identified as 'an intelligent Jewess.' Ergo, my character had to be a Jewish woman living in L.A. in around 1940. And I sensed that, despite her brief role in The Big Sleep with its mean streets and glittery night life, the Jewess inhabited a very different Los Angeles."
Steinberg is a San Diego-based arts journalist who has written for The San Diego Union-Tribune, Dance Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and other publications. She has taught fiction writing at the University of California, San Diego, and dance criticism at San Diego State University.
She has written five mystery novels, including the Shamus Award-nominated Death in a City of Mystics.
A native of Wisconsin, she earned a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of California, Irvine. She holds a blue belt in the Nia dance-fitness practice and teaches weekly classes.
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