Jeff Lefkoff was raised in the tight-knit Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of Atlanta. He was active in BBYO and the JCC sleep­away sum­mer camp. Lefkoff was a young man in 1980 when he moved to Mia­mi and met his four great uncles. The sto­ry frag­ments from their child­hood, sup­ple­ment­ed by exten­sive his­tor­i­cal research into ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Brook­lyn, became the inspi­ra­tion for his novel.