The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel

Description

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a ''temporary'' safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written. Cover......Page 1 Title page......Page 9 Copyright page......Page 10 The Yiddish Policemen's Union......Page 15 1......Page 17 2......Page 24 3......Page 30 4......Page 37 5......Page 42 6......Page 51 7......Page 68 8......Page 78 9......Page 84 10......Page 98 11......Page 112 12......Page 117 13......Page 122 14......Page 136 15......Page 142 16......Page 151 17......Page 162 18......Page 167 19......Page 177 20......Page 187 21......Page 195 22......Page 199 23......Page 213 24......Page 222 25......Page 229 26......Page 243 27......Page 246 28......Page 253 29......Page 263 30......Page 272 31......Page 280 32......Page 292 33......Page 298 34......Page 305 35......Page 314 36......Page 328 37......Page 337 38......Page 345 39......Page 352 40......Page 372 41......Page 378 42......Page 385 43......Page 394 44......Page 398 45......Page 410 46......Page 418 Author's Note......Page 429