Away

Lillian Leyb’s epic journey from a Russian pogrom across America to Alaska is so epic, it seems impossible gifted novelist Bloom has fit the story into only 240 pages.

When “goyim” neighbors attacked her family, Lillian slipped her daughter out of the window and told her to hide. A search afterwards failed to locate the girl, so the grief-stricken mother immigrated to America where distant relatives lived. This was the New York of Doctorow’s Ragtime, both colorful and tragic. Lillian found work as a seamstress in a Yiddish theater and a lover to house her, settling into a comfortable life that lasted two years until a new émigré arrived with news that her daughter had been rescued by another family and taken to Siberia. Lillian cannot live without trying to find her girl and makes her way to Seattle and through the wild Alaskan frontier with help from unlikely sources.

Rich in character and tone, Away is a read to savor.

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