This novel tells the story of Louis Greenberg, a young Jewish conman and talented jazz musician who has run away to Los Angeles from his family’s home in the Bronx. It is 1948, and Louis, who holds a questionable “4F” status from the army, spends his days conning “war widows,” his nights playing piano in bebop gigs. He narrates the tale in the parlance of the time and place, black jazz clubs where he is the only white player. He gets involved with a local black woman, a socially unacceptable arrangement in that era, and he sets out to prove himself to her and to his estranged father in the Bronx. It took me a little time to get used to the language in Louis’ monologue-like narrative but it made Louis more believable. I was surprised the author is a woman.
Miriam Bradman Abrahams, mom, grandmom, avid reader, sometime writer, born in Havana, raised in Brooklyn, residing in Long Beach on Long Island. Longtime former One Region One Book chair and JBC liaison for Nassau Hadassah, currently presenting Incident at San Miguel with author AJ Sidransky who wrote the historical fiction based on her Cuban Jewish refugee family’s experiences during the revolution. Fluent in Spanish and Hebrew, certified hatha yoga instructor.
