Jonathan Rabb, "AmongThe Living"

    I took this book out from the Library 'on spec,' as it were. It did not have much in the way of glowing blurbs on the cover, and I had never heard of the author--Jonathan Rabb, though he does seem to have won the odd award. 
    The scene is set in Savannah, Georgia, a year or two after the war, when Yitzhak Goldah, a concentration camp survivor, arrives to live with a married couple, Abe and Pearl, one of whom (I forget which) was his cousin and had sponsored his emigration from Europe. They quickly tell him to use Ike rather than Yitzhak. 
    Abe runs a shoe shop and there is a sub-plot that I never quite understood about shipments of shoes from Italy and dirty work at the docks, which leads to a black employee of Abe getting beaten up and his hand mangled.
    Yitzak falls for a beautiful widow, who is a member of another Jewish congregation with which Abe and Pearl's congregation is in some form of conflict. The rivalry between the Conservative and Reform Jewish congregations in Savannah (which is, apparently, historical fact) plays an important role in the development of the plot. And throughout the narrative it is clear just how white Savannah is systematically suppressing the black Savannah.
    It's not a 'must read' by any means. But I stuck with it, and Rabb kept me dangling as how it would end. I did find one brief review that was half-heartedly praiseworthy--"...an overly schematic novel about suffering, trauma, and healing."
    As a footnote, I checked Savannah's Jewish history and discovered that it was the home of one of the first Jewish communities in the United States. In 1733, there was an epidemic of what was probably yellow fever, and ships were barred from the port--but one from England carrying a party of Sephardic Jews from the famous Bevis Marks Synagogue in London was permitted to land because they had a doctor on board--Samuel Nunis. I also read that at one time the Jewish population of Savannah reached 35 percent.