About this ebook
A brilliant tragicomedy based on the most infamous espionage trial of the twentieth century
Thirty years after they walked hand in hand to the electric chair, sentenced to die for giving the gift of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, Solomon and Dolores Rubell are the targets of a new investigation—conducted not by the FBI, or some paranoid Senate subcommittee, but by Gerald Lerner, boyhood Communist and author of such classic chronicles of the American Jewish experience as Hot Pastrami Sandwich and Kosher and Topless. What does Gerald hope to find, all these years later, by placing ads in the Jewish Daily Forward and Screw seeking former Soviet spies willing to chat?
The short answer: His sanity.
With a gleam in its eye and tenderness in its heart, David Evanier's irreverent and incisive novel peers into one of the darkest chapters in American history—the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. Because, as Suzie Sizzle—great-niece of Dolly and Solly Rubell and star of a "goodly number" of hardcore films—explains to Gerald, this is not really a story about death, despite its gloomy ending. It is a story about love—the true love two proud Jewish underdogs had for each other, and the misguided love an entire generation of American leftists had for a political system whose grand promises masked terrible, irreconcilable truths.
They say love will make you do crazy things. So, too, will Communism.
Thirty years after they walked hand in hand to the electric chair, sentenced to die for giving the gift of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, Solomon and Dolores Rubell are the targets of a new investigation—conducted not by the FBI, or some paranoid Senate subcommittee, but by Gerald Lerner, boyhood Communist and author of such classic chronicles of the American Jewish experience as Hot Pastrami Sandwich and Kosher and Topless. What does Gerald hope to find, all these years later, by placing ads in the Jewish Daily Forward and Screw seeking former Soviet spies willing to chat?
The short answer: His sanity.
With a gleam in its eye and tenderness in its heart, David Evanier's irreverent and incisive novel peers into one of the darkest chapters in American history—the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. Because, as Suzie Sizzle—great-niece of Dolly and Solly Rubell and star of a "goodly number" of hardcore films—explains to Gerald, this is not really a story about death, despite its gloomy ending. It is a story about love—the true love two proud Jewish underdogs had for each other, and the misguided love an entire generation of American leftists had for a political system whose grand promises masked terrible, irreconcilable truths.
They say love will make you do crazy things. So, too, will Communism.
A brilliant tragicomedy based on the most infamous espionage trial of the twentieth century
Thirty years after they walked hand in hand to the electric chair, sentenced to die for giving the gift of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, Solomon and Dolores Rubell are the targets of a new investigat...
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About the author
David Evanier is the author of seven books. His work includes novels, story collections, and biographies of entertainment legends. Evanier's work has been published in Best American Short Stories and has been honored with the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for short fiction. He is a former fiction editor of the Paris Review and a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, as well as a fellow of Yaddo and of the Wurlitzer Foundation. He has taught creative writing at UCLA and Douglas College. He lives in Brooklyn and is currently writing a biography of Woody Allen.
David Evanier is the author of seven books. His work includes novels, story collections, and biographies of entertainment legends. Evanier's work has been published in Best American Short Stories and has been honored with the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for short fic...
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