"THE FROZEN CHOSEN"
That's the sub-title of this New York Times review of a new book by Michael Chabon, titled "The Yiddish Policeman's Union". It's apparently a classic murder mystery with the following, intriguing premise:
"In this fourth novel, which comes out Tuesday, Mr. Chabon takes a historical footnote, a pie-in-the-sky proposal to open up the Alaska Territory in 1940 to European Jews marked for extermination, and asks: What if?
What if this proposal, which in real life was supported by the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, but killed in Congress, had actually passed?
What if Jews had poured into a frigid island instead of the Middle Eastern desert, and the state of Israel had never been created?
What if the small settlement of Sitka had grown into a teeming Jewish homeland, a land not of milk and honey but of salmon and lumber?"
The review goes on to provide some additional glimpses into what this new book by the Pulitzer prize winning author is about:
"It wasn’t until 2003 that Mr. Chabon began to transform this momentary flight of fancy into “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” a detective story in the hard-boiled style of Raymond Chandler, where the dead body and the detective both make their appearance on the first page.
The following year he visited Alaska and chose Sitka (it “sounds kind of Yiddish”) as home for the three million European Jews — and their children and grandchildren — his imagination saved from the Holocaust."
Here's how the Publisher's Weekly review from Amazon describes the book:
"It is—deep breath now—a murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller, so perhaps it's no surprise that, in the back half of the book, the moving parts become unwieldy; Chabon is juggling narrative chainsaws here."
Despite the mixed review by PW, the whole thing sounds amazing; sort of Gorky Park meets Northern Exposure with an alternative history twist. It's an odd connection, I know, since the former is a book (later a movie with William Hurt), and the latter a terrific, and under-appreciated CBS TV series. But both are long-time, personal favorites.
I've already Amazoned the book. It'll go near the top of the summer reading pile.
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