A Castle in Brooklyn: A Novel by Shirley Russak Wachtel

 

"All in all, it was a sweet little home that was always, it seemed, filled with laughter and warmth and light. Not a big ostentatious home with ornate crystal bowls and fancy engravings, and, in fact, not really very big at all. But for Jacob, it was everything----a castle."

            -Jacob's vision, from the Prologue

This Amazon First Reads selection was a disappointment. I normally enjoy historical fiction and I thought this one was centered around the Holocaust. I almost always find such survival stories compelling and inspiring. Although a part of the background of this novel is 1944 Poland, very little involves that setting; it is used more in a few flashbacks. Main character Jacob, a Jew, escapes the Nazis as a young man and helps a fellow refugee, Zalman, to make it out, as well. The two become very close friends, almost like brothers. They end up in Brooklyn where Jacob enlists Zalman's design expertise to build his "castle." (See quote.)

Jacob marries Esther who, even in the face of tragedy, is a rock.

I have rated A Castle in Brooklyn a 3 but was thinking more like a 2+ or 3-. The story was a lot of talk and not much action and the last part left me wondering if the author just needed extra pages to satisfy the publisher. After Jacob's death, Esther moves to Florida (I don't remember why) and leaves her friend and neighbor Florrie to handle the rental of Jacob's "castle." Two rentals work out poorly and the final potential tenant is connected to Zalman. The ending was interesting but the other two rentals seemed pointless.

This one I would not recommend.