Introduction

Vilna 1941. An inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their Vilna ghetto. "Something to remind me of the sweetness," the wise woman tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives promise to converge. Brooklyn-born Mira Kane is the talented eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer of women's knitwear in New York. Her cousin, eight-year-old Rosha Kaninsky, is the lone survivor of a family abroad exterminated by the invading Nazis. Yet, unbeknownst to her American relatives, the orphaned Rosha did not perish. Desperate to save his child during a round-up, her father thrust Rosha into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who hides her? putting her own family at risk. The headstrong Mira, who dreams of escaping Brooklyn for a career as a fashion designer, finds her ambitions abruptly thwarted when, traumatized at the fate of his European relatives, her father becomes intent on safeguarding his loved ones from all threats of a brutal world. Everyone must challenge his injurious and spiraling survivor guilt. Though the Kanes endure the experience of the Jews who got out, they reveal how even in the safety of our lives, we are profoundly affected by the dire circumstances of others. Like The Book Thief and Those Who Save Us, The Sweetness is a poignant portrait of life during a most tragic time in history.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

Vilna 1941

Like most Friday nights, I wait for Poppa by the parlor window. Leaning against the pane where someone recently threw a fistful of stones, I run my fingers along the spidery break. Bubbe looks up from her crocheting (she is making a wool cap for me in this heat) and scolds. She warns me to move away from the window. There is such fright in her voice that all the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Yet still I don’t budge.

“They might see you,” Bubbe says, “no matter what Rosha, you must not let them see you.”

But because I am not certain who it is that may be watching me, and Bubbe’s words create even more curiosity, I take one more peek.

“I am watching for Poppa . . . what is the harm?”

Without speaking, my grandmother raises herself from the creaky, wooden rocking chair and marches straight across the room. The floor appears to sink a bit under each of her steps. My hand is twisted around a panel of lacy white curtain, one finger poking through a circular hole. It is a tiny hole, the center of a floral pattern, maybe roses, and quite convenient to peek from. Beside me now, Bubbe peels my bent fingers, one by one, from the curtains.

“Ouch,” I complain, though the truth is Bubbe is not really hurting me.

“Never mind mein kind,” she says. Bubbe takes my hands in hers and kisses the top of my forehead. Her breath smells from pickled herring and onions, and I allow her to kiss me, mostly because she has not yet smacked me. She smacked me just the other day, for the very first time, after she caught me scooping all the melted wax from a Yahrtseit candle. Bubbe had lit the fat white candle for her husband, my Grandpa Yussel, who died last year of something called the pneumonia. She slapped my hands until they stung, and told me I might have put the entire house on fire, and that an eight-year-old should stay away from matches, flames, and anything hot. But it was so much fun to pour the melted wax into the palm of my hand. As the warmth oozed between my fingers, I rolled the soft glob into many shapes, working quickly before the wax became too brittle like candy. I made a little bear like the ones Poppa says live inside Ponary, a deep, dark forest only a few miles out of town. Another time, when I didn’t get caught, I made a giraffe from the warm wax of our shabbos candles.

“Come, sit with your Bubbe and let me hear you read.” She licks her fingers to smooth my braids, and all I can think is now I, too, will smell of pickled herring and onions. Yet I smile at my grandmother as though I am really happy, and for a minute that’s exactly the way I feel. Bubbe leans in and quietly examines my new front teeth that take up much too much space in my mouth.

So my question about what harm can come from standing by the window goes unanswered. Like most of the questions I ask, this one is also ignored. Instead, like always, someone stands up or moves around and says something that has nothing to do with my question, until I become very confused, sometimes a little bit frightened.

Still, most of the time, I try to do what I am told. Especially because of all the tears and sadness since Grandpa Yussel was buried, and Bubbe and Poppa threw shovels of red dirt on the long pine box that carried his body to the cemetery. Since then, Bubbe spends a lot of time with us up here on the third floor, although she still has her own place downstairs at 118 Sadowa Street. She and Grandpa Yussel have owned this building for years, since the family moved here, from so many different places—places like Riga, which is in Latvia, and Prague, in a country really hard to say, and some from as far as Budapest, which Poppa says is in Hungary but has nothing to do with hunger. Bubbe is Poppa’s mother, and so he often teases her that she spends too much of her time worrying about things that aren’t real like me burning down the house and putting us out on the street. Once I almost said, Poppa, now I see why you are so careful to always do or say the right thing, so not to make a mistake, but isn’t that a little bit like worrying? Still I kept my thought inside. Besides, I love to watch when Poppa thinks long and hard about a problem. I laugh when the pointy V appears between his bushy, dark eyebrows, and his tongue pokes in and out like bait teasing for an answer. And no matter how hard the question, Poppa always finds an answer.

In the past few weeks there are so many people asking questions, and lots of talking, talking that sounds mostly like worry. Whenever we go to the grocer, the butcher, or to the open market before each weekend, all we hear are deep sighs and the dry clacking sounds of people’s tongues. When they whisper, their heads shake and their smiling eyes turn dark. All of this makes me think I am not paying good enough attention. That I am indeed “a dreamer” as Bubbe likes to remind me time and time again.

Wearing her Friday evening dress-up apron, Mama comes from the kitchen and heads straight for the scrunched up curtains. She pretends to be fluffing them out, but I know she is looking for Poppa. I know because of what she says next. What she has never said.

“It is nearly sundown, and Mordecai is late. Could he have forgotten today is Friday?” She asks Bubbe. “No one in our shtetl is to be out after dark. Everywhere they have patrols.” Mama stops talking as soon as she realizes that I am listening to her every word.

Here I am, split into pieces: one piece thinking about Poppa’s whereabouts; the second, trying to understand the meaning behind Mama’s words; and the third, wanting to go sit in Bubbe’s mushy lap, to forget everything and help her roll a skein of the pretty pink yarn.

While Mama circles the table arranging the dinner plates, I squeeze my eyes shut and think of us all together before everything became so mysterious and confusing. Before I had to stay at home and learn my lessons, while some of my friends still go to our neigh- borhood school. Before the soldiers with those horribly mean faces stood guard on every corner and forced people to show their papers and empty their pockets for no reason at all.

I do miss running and playing outdoors with my friends, especially now in the warmer weather. It was only a few weeks ago when Mama and I went about our day preparing for shabbos. I remember how the heat from the sun settled on the cobblestones baking them dry after they were scrubbed clean by the shopkeepers. Mama and I counted the rainbows that danced upon the rocks slippery surfaces, brighten- ing the dusty blues and silvery grays until the colors seemed to blend and disappear into the hot air.

If Mama hadn’t seen the rainbows as well, Poppa might not have believed me. He might have asked if I was “stretching the truth” like, I’ll admit, I do to get his attention. But because he wears his widest grin when he asks, I know a bit of truth-stretching is far from a terrible thing.

An orangey sun trailed behind us as we made our way down the aisles of the open market in the square, a few steps from the old synagogue. Though now we can no longer pray there in the evening. I miss watching the hundreds of candles flickering behind the bimah near the carved doors that hold the Torah and all the ancient scrolls. Everyone stands whenever they take out the Torah. They unroll it tenderly as if they are handling a newborn baby, and people, once even my very own Poppa, was called to read a story in special Hebrew words. When the rabbi shook his hand afterward, my face began to burn. I felt so proud.

That morning Mama bought two whole chickens from Mr. Gursky—one for Bubbe, which she says will last the week since Bubbe eats like a little birdie now with Yussel gone, and one for us. Although I don’t swallow one bite since I looked up at the exact moment that Mr. Gursky chopped off the chicken’s droopy head. All I can think about is the blood squirting like soda pop on Mr. Gursky’s white jacket, and the red speck that landed on his nose. Yes, I am done with chicken. I will agree to some spoonfuls of potato soup, a slice of Mama’s stringy flanken, but not one bite of chicken.

We made our very last stop to Mrs. Juraska, the candle maker. Mama likes to keep a supply of candles in the drawer next to the silverware, and so she stopped to chat with Mrs. Juraska, who sometimes invited me to watch her make her candles when she wasn’t too busy.

That day, she took me in the back of her tented space and showed me hundreds of little tin molds and large blocks of paraffin. She had a box of glass vials filled with food coloring and dried wildflowers that she sometimes presses into the wax molds.

Although she’s only a few years older than Mama, the candle maker looks as old as Bubbe. I wonder if that’s because she has more children, and Mama has only me. I once heard her telling Mama that children can often rob the life out of you. Still, I wish Mama would have another. It would be real nice to have a baby sister, someone to cuddle and play with especially indoors. It gets very lonely here on Sadowa Street.

“Rosha, you are getting so tall,” Mrs. Juraska said, her eyes widen- ing with surprise. She was wrapping four long white candles in dark brown paper, reminding us they might melt if we didn’t go straight home.

“She is much too skinny, my precious Rosha. Not so tall,” Mama said, paying the smiling candle maker, “she eats like her grandmother. Food grows mold in her plate.” Mama brushed my hair back with her fingers. I grabbed her pinky and held it tightly in my hand.

“Well, you never know Mrs. Kaninsky, one day she may be as big as a house or like the monument on the square, a real hausfrau like me. I, too, was once a scrawny child. Thank goodness my husband likes some flesh on his women.”

Mama was trying to be polite when she laughed. Impossible, I thought. Me? A big girl? I gazed down the street to the bronze statue of a heavy peasant woman carrying a basket of fruit on her head. Pigeons have made it a favorite nesting spot, and there is always thick white pigeon poop dripping down the poor woman’s face.

Just as we were about to leave, Mrs. Juraska held up two long tapered candles. They were peach-colored and wavy like hair ribbons. I had never seen such beautiful candles, but Mama shook her head no. “Nothing fancy for shabbos,” she said. “Only pure white.” Then she added, “perhaps another time,” and I felt happy picturing the wavy candles glowing brightly on our dinner table. As soon as we walked away, Mama leaned in and whispered what I never knew. “Mrs. Juraska is Catholic, and her husband is just like us—Jewish.”

“Really?” I said, and then Mama said she’d forgotten something. “Wait here, darling.” Mama dug deep into her satchel then handed Mrs. Juraska a white envelope. I thought maybe she had forgotten to pay her for the candles, but then I remembered seeing a few sheckels pass between their fingers.

“What was that, Mama?” I asked when she grabbed my hand again and started walking toward home.

“What was what, Rosha?”

“Never mind, I answered.” I was too hot, too tired and still nauseous thinking about that poor dead chicken.

But then a few minutes later, I asked Mama if the candle maker ever got the chance to light and enjoy the beautiful candles she made. Did she celebrate the Sabbath? Did she watch the candles glow against the walls and ceilings of her home through long summer evenings until their flames flickered and the wax disintegrated into nothing? But Mama just sighed loudly and said: “Enough Rosha, it’s late, time to go home.”

“Thank you God!” Bubbe and Mama sing out at the exact same moment. Poppa’s footsteps sound like thunder. I imagine him climb- ing the stairs two at a time, each step stamped like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence. When he enters the room, he is out of breath and sweating, carrying his suit jacket over his arm.

Bubbe stays glued to her chair, but she is rocking back and forth so hard I am afraid she may go flying across the room. Mama runs to Poppa, her eyes searching every single inch of him, her hands touch- ing his face.

“I waited to light the candles, Mordecai. Is everything all right?” Mama glances in my direction; she remembers I’m in the room. “Never mind, we’ll talk later. Go now, wash up.”

I am standing next to the buffet table getting ready to do my special job, the one I do every Friday night. Carefully, I fit the tall candles into their shiny silver holders so they will not tip over onto the lace doily when Mama says the blessing into her hands before lighting them.

“Ester, I’m going to change out of my wet shirt,” Poppa says, moving quickly past the women in this room. His women, he calls us. He places a kiss on the back of Mama’s neck, nods to Bubbe who stalls in her chair. And just when I am certain he has forgotten me, he sticks his fingers into my ribs for a surprise tickle making me giggle and buckle at the knees.

“Please hurry Morde,” Mama says, stealing away my fun with Poppa. He tosses his jacket across the arm of a dining room chair. Mama picks it up, shakes it out, then stares.

“What’s that, Mama?” But like so many questions—the too many I’m told I ask, this one does not need an answer. What I see is as clear as the glass that used to shine brightly in our parlor window. Wrapped around the sleeve of Poppa’s jacket is a cuff made of a gauzy gray cloth. Sewn into the middle and as large as a melting sun is a six-pointed yellow star. In the middle are the letters: J-U-D-E. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. In the first chapter of The Sweetness we are introduced to young Rosha who sees signs of impending doom. What were some of the early hints things were about to change for her family? How does the child display her fears?

2. When we meet Mira for the first time, she, too, exhibits a sense of anxiety and yet she is focused on her fashion designs and career. Is this how she deals with her concerns?

3. Charlie Kane’s survivor guilt is an ongoing theme in The Sweetness. How would you describe his character, and what, besides his guilt, do you think drove him to make many of his decisions?

4. How would you compare Avram Juraska to Charlie Kane? As fathers and husbands, how are they alike and dissimilar?

5. There’s a quote from the Talmud that says: When you save one life, it is as though you have saved the entire world. What do you think creates that the kind of selflessness as shown by Marta, the candle maker? Do you believe there are people like her in the world today? Does she remind you of other literary characters?

Weblinks

»	Author's web site
»	Follow the author on Facebook
»	Follow the author on Twitter
»	Publisher's Book Info

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book