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Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time-and another triumph for Pete Hamill. Brooklyn, 1947. The war veterans have come home. Jackie Robinson is about to become a Dodger. And in one close-knit working-class neighborhood, an eleven-year-old Irish Catholic boy named Michael Devlin has just made friends with a lonely rabbi from Prague. Snow in August is the story of that unlikely friendship-and of how the neighborhood reacts to it. For Michael, the rabbi opens a window to ancient learning and lore that rival anything in Captain Marvel. For the rabbi, Michael illuminates the everyday mysteries of America, including the strange language of baseball. But like their hero Jackie Robinson, neither can entirely escape from the swirling prejudices of the time. Terrorized by a local gang of anti-Semitic Irish toughs, Michael and the rabbi are caught in an escalating spiral of hate for which there's only one way out-a miracle . . .… (more)
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The boy has 2 best friends but he learned who his best friends REALLY are when tragedy strikes.
This is the first book that I've read by Mr. Hammill. I wouldn't mind reading another by him.
When a gang of
The friendship between Michael and the Rabbis is beautifully related, as they seal an agreement for Michael to teach the Czechoslovakian Rabbis English and the mysteries of baseball while in return he receives instruction in Yiddish. Michael learns a lot more besides, including much of the history of the Jews in Prague, and becomes an avid student lapping up all he is taught, something which he extends to his school work.
Michael is a delightful boy, a good kid with an insatiable appetite for learning, true to his ideals. Snow in August is a charming story, at times funny, full of hope and the power of faith and of good over evil; it is also a story of what some might call magic, yet believers a miracle.
There are many side-stories about Jewish history, Jackie Robinson, and life in New York... sometimes you wonder where they are going but it all fits together in the end.
Set in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood in 1947, this poignant tale revolves around two of the most endearing characters in