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The Jew Store - Stella Suberman
The Jew Store
by: (author)
4.00 20
For a real bargain, while you're making a living, you should make also a life.--Aaron Bronson. In 1920, in small town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store--suits and coats, shoes and hats, work clothes and school clothes, yard goods and notions--was usually owned by Jews and often referred to... show more
For a real bargain, while you're making a living, you should make also a life.--Aaron Bronson. In 1920, in small town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store--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 Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town (1920 population: 5,318) of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. Aaron Bronson moved his family all the way from New York City to that remote corner of northwest Tennessee to prove himself a born salesman--and much more. Told by Aaron's youngest child, THE JEW STORE is that rare thing--an intimate family story that sheds new light on a piece of American history. Here is ONE MAN'S FAMILY with a twist--a Jew, born into poverty in prerevolutionary Russia and orphaned from birth, finds his way to America, finds a trade, finds a wife, and sets out to find his fortune in a place where Jews are unwelcome. With a novelist's sense of scene, suspense, and above all, characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when rural America was more peaceful but no less prejudiced, when educated liberals were suspect, and when the Klan was threatening to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, liberality, and decency can build a home anywhere. THE JEW STORE is a heartwarming--even inspiring--story.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9781565123304 (1565123301)
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Pages no: 320
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
Telynor's Library, and then some
Telynor's Library, and then some rated it
4.0
I was very surprised with this book, finding in it a very different view of Jewish life in America at the start of the twentieth century. Using the stories in her own family, Stella Suberman gives a well-written fictionalized memoir of life in a small town in Tennessee with plenty of sarcasm, wit, a...
Thewanderingjew
Thewanderingjew rated it
4.0 The Jew Store
I am learning so much from this book, which is someone else's memoir, as it informs me about my early Jewish heritage and the plight of my parents. It is written with such warmth and written so well that it often makes me smile with remembrance and understanding as my life experience's parallel thos...
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