The Jew Store, a Family Memoir
by Stella Suberman
Category: Biography & Autobiography

This debut memoir about a Jewish family pursuing the American Dream in the early twentieth century South is “vividly told and captivating in its humanity” (Kirkus Reviews). In small town America, in 1920, the ubiquitous dry goods store—selling suits and coats, shoes and hats, work clothes and school clothes, yard goods and notions—was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as “the Jew store.” That’s how Bronson’s Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee—owned and run by Stella Suberman’s father—was known. The Bronsons were the first Jews to live in the tiny Southern town consisting of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, and many Christian churches. Born into poverty in prerevolutionary Russia, Aaron Bronson moved his family from New York City to that remote corner of northwest Tennessee to prove himself a born salesman—and much more. With a novelist’s sense of scene, suspense, and characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when educated liberals were suspect and the Klan was a major threat to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, and decency can build a home anywhere.