Room for a Son

Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1951. First Edition. Hardcover. [light shelfwear, a bit of wear to spine ends; the jacket is modestly edgeworn, with minor paper loss at the spine ends, and a small horizontal tear mid-spine (no paper loss)]. "This novel tells a simple, moving and intensely human story about a Jewish family in a small American town and the young refugee whom they adopted. ... Through it all the reader is conscious of the sturdy Americanism of the small town's population, the Americanism that accepts the stranger, reaches out a helping hand to the neighbor and expresses itself in democratic cooperation. The one word that cements Americanism and Judaism at their best, and which lies at the basis of this delightful story, is the word which expresses the depth of religious teaching -- Loving-kindness." The author's jacket blurb states that he's written four previous novels and three books of poetry, and is uniquely qualified to tell this heart-warming tale "by reason of his activity as President of the Jewish Family Service of Philadelphia, an agency which has supervised the resettlement of more than six hundred Jewish refugee families in that community." The rather unbelievably-warm-and-welcoming small town is never named, but it is said to be in Pennsylvania, and at one point early in the book the characters "drive down to Philadelphia," apparently without breaking much of a sweat -- so let's just say it's Allentown or thereabouts. ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-fiction." .