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At forty-eight, Naomi Kaplan has become resigned in many ways to her fate as a spinster. But when a brief encounter with a handsome stranger at her place of work results in an unexpected gesture of kindness, all of the romantic dreams she once buried long ago come rushing back. Yet despite Darrin being unmarried and events conspiring to bring them together again, there is a maelstrom brewing: Naomi is a devout Orthodox Jew while Darrin is a committed Christian. With such religious differences, is it possible to have a future together?
With pitch-perfect prose, Wolf explores how cultures can clash but also gain from the experience. The book begins with the murder of a Chassidic Jew by an unknown assailant and then jumps back a bit in time to focus on the title character, David Kaplan, who has retired from the newspaper business. One of the most engaging and sympathetic characters in the novel, David is rock-solid in his beliefs and culture but is also a lover of all humanity. He visits sick children in the hospital as Santa and goes to "work" periodically at the New York Public Library with two other retirees: a liberal Jew and a former taxi driver of Arab descent named Mahmoud. Darrin, however, poses a severe threat to David, because like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Naomi's father is determined to hold onto that traditions, represented both by the family's antique menorah and the linotype machine he mastered in his career, that help define him.
Wolf is definitely a writer to watch. In a book that could be the love child of Faye Kellerman and Neil Simon, he expertly blends suspense, romance, and humor into a satisfying novel of Jewish-American life.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review