Larry Zuckerman
Historical fiction, kept real
I write stories about independent-minded people who resist injustice and seek hope and strength through love
My latest, To Save a Life
Foreword INDIES Award Finalist
“Readers will enjoy Zuckerman’s well-researched historical novel and its strong characters.” — Barbara Bibel, Library Journal
In 1909, Malka Kaminsky steals her dowry to flee Russia and an arranged marriage, arriving in New York hungry for freedom. Drawn into the hustle of the Golden Land, Malka joins a sweatshop strike and is nearly beaten by thugs, but a stranger and fellow Russian Jew, Yaakov Rogovin, rescues her. Malka doesn’t thank him, refusing to acknowledge her debt, but when chance brings Yaakov to her Sabbath table, they laugh and trade warm glances—only to deny their mutual attraction. After all, they carry deep scars from Russia, where admitting to desires led to heartache. But as they strive to become entrepreneurs—Yaakov, as a musician, and Malka, as a dressmaker—they hope that independence will teach them how to live unafraid, despite shameful pasts. And they will need that lesson soon, because when Malka’s fiancé arrives, determined to reclaim her, she seeks Yaakov’s help–and his empathy. But neither of them can guess what fighting for their dreams will cost.
History behind the novel
The three photographs at right offer a glimpse of life on New York’s Lower East Side during the early twentieth century.
The first depicts a sweatshop in 1908. The word comes from the term sweater, applied to a middleman who’d bid to supply a wholesaler with finished garments. He’d hire new immigrants or other workers who desperately needed jobs, whom he sweated–paid little for each finished piece–to try to make a profit. In its original meaning, a sweatshop was a factory that allowed this practice.
The second photo, from 1912, shows a Jewish family sewing garter belts at their kitchen table, perhaps paid by a sweater.
The third photo portrays a man walking on Delancey Street that same year, carrying a bundle of piecework garments.
My grandparents, who emigrated to this country from Eastern Europe around 1910, met in a sweatshop. That’s one reason I empathize with immigrants.
These photographs, in the public domain, come from the Library of Congress. The latter two are by Lewis Hine, one of my favorite photographers from that era.
Lonely Are the Brave
In 1919, Rollie Birch returns a war hero to Lumberton, a (fictional) logging town in Washington, grieving his wife’s death. When he quits his father’s construction company to tend his infant daughter full-time, Lumberton is aghast, and gossips snicker that the child isn’t even his. Meanwhile, timber heiress Kay Sorensen dreams of a business career, but her lawyer husband, back from the army, interrogates her about the bank account she opened and soon tells her to quit her job. Kay wonders whether the war changed him. Rollie might know—the men served together—while Rollie thinks Kay might know whether his late wife cheated on him. But Kay and Rollie have disliked each other since high school—and in Lumberton, secrets combust once they’re shared.
My historical nonfiction
The Potato
When the spud first reached Europe, people believed it was a poison, a tool of black magic, the cause of disease, or food fit only for the lower classes–but that changed in remarkable ways. The engine of population explosions, revolutions in agriculture and industry, and a staple whose infamous failure in the 1840s changed nations, the potato is much more than a vegetable. The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World brought me my fifteen minutes of fame: a gig on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” an invitation to address the World Potato Congress, strong reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Andre Simon Special Commendation Award in the UK.
The Rape of Belgium
When Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, that brought Great Britain into what was then called the Great War, with consequences still visible today. But the German occupation of Belgium, which imposed intense surveillance, wholesale expropriation of property, and forced labor created a totalitarian state before the word had entered the language and foreshadowed the Nazi Occupation of Europe.
I’m proud that a Belgian publisher had The Rape of Belgium translated, and that I was invited to speak at the Antwerp book fair.
