| Big League Dreams Revised Edition Contributor(s): Hoffman, Allen (Author) |
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ISBN: 0789205831 ISBN-13: 9780789205834 Publisher: Abbeville Press OUR PRICE: $11.66 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 1999 Annotation: The first two novels in Allen Hoffman's critically acclaimed series "Small Worlds" are now available in paperback. The first volume, Small Worlds, takes place in 1903 and introduces the wondrous rebbe of Krimsk, a small Hasidic settlement in Eastern Europe. Secluded in his study for the past five years, the beloved rebbe suddenly emerges on the eve of Tisha B'Av, the holiday commemorating the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem. His congregants are overjoyed to see him, but their joy is to be short-lived, for this holiday at the dawn of the 20th century will be marked by strange and momentous events that will change their lives forever. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Series: Small Worlds |
| Physical Information: 0.87" H x 4.83" W x 7.54" (0.68 lbs) 296 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbe's former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of gold in the streets evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday's game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers. It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch's sizable bets; Barasch's lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime. Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaoh's blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah. Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite small worlds his characters inhabit |