Overview

THE WRITER OF THE EXTRAORDINARY, CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED PLAY OUT LATE EMERGES WITH A POWERFUL, EMOTIONALLY REVERBERANT DEBUT NOVEL THAT CAPTURES THE HARDSHIP, OPPRESSION AND HOPE OF A JEWISH MERCHANT'S LIFE BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER WORLD WAR II IN THE USSR. Feeling stifled as a Jew living in a Moldovan shtetl, violinist Elazar just wants to find love and eventually succeed his father as conductor of the family band and hardware business. But that could take years, and in 1922 Kalarash, there are very few girls his age and he's known all of them since he was a child. He would love to move to Kishinev, Odesa, or Kyiv on his own and become a musician, but he knows it would kill his mama, and he'd feel guilty for the rest of his life. At his cousin's wedding in Kishinev, Elazar falls for Ita Kaplan, a wealthy heiress from Bolgrad, a key trade city on the Black Sea near the Romanian border, but she shuns him because she dreams of moving to Paris and becoming a painter. He then loses his heart to Mariam Gabashvili, the blossoming daughter of a local vintner, but his papa forbids him from marrying her because she's not Jewish. History-the rise of Stalin, his brutal takeover of Ukraine, and later Hitler's invasion of the USSR-grants Elazar's wishes in ways he never dreams, sending he and his family on an epic flight to Uzbekistan, where they endure the war, and then back to Moldova, where they pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. In this stunning novel based on true events, Tim Turner and Moisey Gorbaty brilliantly re-create Jewish life in the Soviet Union, where, while life was punishing and brutally unfair, one violinist finds music in devastation and conducts his family-his orchestra-in such a way as to not let the horrors defeat them or hate to overcome them.

Full Product Details

9798218267544

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

The writer of six plays including the critically acclaimed Out Late, as well as High Time, Chicken and Fish and Prairie Fire, TIM TURNER has written full time since the early 1980s. He has also written an original screenplay, a libretto, adapted two of his plays into screenplays and written many short plays. As Executive Director of The Playwrights Group in Los Angeles he produced Seven Playwrights Exposing Themselves, an evening of short plays, and the next year, Tales from Hollywood Boulevard. He has three photographs in the permanent collection of The New Orleans Museum of Art. As Associate Editor, he was on the team for American City Business Journals that started The Jacksonville Business Journal, The Charlotte Business Journal and The San Francisco Business Times. His articles and photos have appeared in publications such as Money Magazine, The San Francisco Examiner, Hemispheres, American Banker, and National Real Estate Investor. A fifth-generation native of Durango, Colorado, he lives in Los Angeles and Laguna Beach. A prolific composer and the proprietor of Moisey's Piano Service where he tunes and restores pianos, MOISEY GORBATY also teaches piano, guitar, music theory and Russian Language. Born in Kishinev, Moldova, he began playing accordion at the age of four, won his first music competition at age eight, and since the age of 15 supported his family working as a concertmaster and leader of union bands. He graduated from Stefan Neaga College of Music in 1969, the Moldovan Conservatory of Music in 1973, and served in the Soviet Army from 1973 to 1974. He immigrated to Los Angeles in 1989 via Vienna and Rome and started his piano service with a wife, a three-year-old daughter, no money and speaking only Russian.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available