Marching to Zion: A Novel
This moving novel by a National Jewish Book Award nominee (for One More River, 2011) is set in the Mississippi Valley during and just after WWI, a region and a period deeply affected by historical events: the brutal East St. Louis race riot of 1919, the devastating Mississippi River floods of 1927, and the Great Depression soon after—all of which touch the book’s characters profoundly, as does the poisonous racial climate of the time. Young African American country girl Mags comes to East St. Louis to make her way and falls in with an unlikely assortment of characters who help her: Magnus Bailey, a black dandy of what initially appears to be questionable character; George McCallum, a black employee of the Fishbein Funeral Home, with whom she falls in love and marries; and the Fishbeins, father and troubled daughter, Minerva. The relationships between blacks and Jews are unusual for the time but are handled with credibility by the talented Glickman. Mr. Fishbein, who likens the riots in his home city to the pogroms of his youth, offers his services to the African American community and forms a succession of partnerships with Bailey. Though Mags regrettably disappears from the narrative, supplanted by her cousin back home, Aurora Mae, the novel is sustained by the rich period detail and by strong and fully realized characters. --Mark Levine