cover image The Reformer's Apprentice: A Novel of Old San Francisco

The Reformer's Apprentice: A Novel of Old San Francisco

Harriet Rochlin. Fithian Press, $19.95 (222pp) ISBN 978-1-56474-167-7

Combining a romance with a colorful re-creation of Jewish life in the American West, this vivid novel portrays an independent-minded woman who rebels against the Orthodox religious strictures of her Polish Jewish immigrant parents in 1870s San Francisco. Idealistic Frieda Levie, while still in high school, works with the Sisters of Service, helping impoverished immigrant children. She dreams of becoming a schoolteacher, a career choice vetoed by her irascible, physically abusive father. When his merchandising business goes bankrupt, Frieda temporarily abandons her dreams and goes to work in her vituperative Aunt Chava's kosher boardinghouse. Frieda's love interest, flamboyant Arizona rancher and real estate developer Bennie Goldson, is unacceptable to her traditional parents, who arrange a brokered marriage that Frieda dramatically rejects. In her nimble, well-researched narrative, Rochlin paints a bustling San Francisco where it's not unusual to hear someone say, ""You bet your boots I daven, but you'll have to grubstake me to a tallis and a yarmulke."" (June)