Street Corner Dreams by Florence Reiss Kraut
Posted by d'Ettaquette
Historical fiction, Street Corner Dreams, by author Florence Reiss Kraut begins with a nightmare.
Disembarking in America after an ill-fated, "Gehenna” (hellish) voyage from Europe, Golda shares tragic news with her brother-in-law, Ben Feinstein. Esther, Ben’s eighteen-year-old wife, died giving birth to a baby boy on board the ship. Stunned, seeing Golda cradling his son, Ben relies on the kindness of Cousin Sarah to accommodate the infant and Golda inside Sarah’s tiny Brooklyn tenement. There is scant space for any of them.
Mourning for her sister, Golda once dreamed of gaining independence in America. Now, living in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood teaming with feuding Italian, Jewish and Irish mobsters, Golda abandons her dreams. Instead, she begrudgingly accedes to marry her brother-in-law, Ben, to become a mother to her sister’s baby, whom they name Morty.
Golda painstakingly saves every penny from her unique embroidery skills, adding her earnings to Ben’s meager income as a mechanic. The daily tribulations of making ends meet often lead to domestic discord, though Golda and Ben envision the day Morty’s planned engineering education would realize a better life for them all.
The onset of the Great Depression creates an inflection point in Ben’s finances. He can barely make ends meet; can’t pay his rent. Golda’s worries are equally pressing. She sees Morty hanging out with his shady friend, Rudy, a “protection runner” for Mickey, the gang leader of the Jewish mob. Mickey is a ruthless loan shark.
With only one year left to complete his engineering degree, Morty hopes to marry his girlfriend, Anna DeMaio. But first, he must persuade both families of their devotion to one another. Neither family welcomes the union between a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl.
As Ben sees his mechanic shop falter and the bank rejects his application for a loan, he surreptitiously empties Golda’s savings. In addition, he secretly arranges a loan with one of Mickey’s thugs, never considering the consequences. As business worsens, Ben turns to his son, Morty, for help. Morty has only one option to save his father from harm. Morty puts his own life on the line and enlists as a “runner” working for Mickey Adler’s gang until his father’s debt is repaid.
A portal into the immigrant life in the 1930 America, peppered with an interfaith love story, author Reiss Kraut unspools the underbelly of Jewish crime at the turn of the century. A quick read, the novel contains a predictable plot with stereotypical characters most suitable for a young adult reader.