Kindle Edition
Amazon
Speaking Volumes
Ce.De.CH
Category:
Family
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Type: Fiction
Pages: 322
Copyright: January 22, 2024
ISBN-13: 9798890220721
Price: $6.99 (eBook)
Sherrie grew up in a close-knit, Old World Chicago family in the 1950s, but her idyllic world changes when she becomes a woman in the turbulent 1960s.
In Farewell to South Shore, Charlene Wexler introduces readers to 15-year-old Sherrie, who is growing up in a close-knit Jewish family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The building in which Sherrie lives is occupied by family with Old World values, in Chicago’s South Shore community. Her relatives are loud, argumentative, and quirky, but they are also loving and solve problems with that love — and great food.
As the 1960s progress, Sherrie and her family increasingly encounter modern day problems and situations, including their changing neighborhood, homosexuality, unplanned pregnancy and abortion, family secrets, domestic abuse, divorce, single motherhood, women’s rights, and romance in middle age.
Sherrie becomes the first girl in the family to go to college, and then to law school. She meets the man of her dreams, marries him, and leaves her career as an attorney behind. But her husband turns out to have old-fashioned patriarchal ideas of his own. Eventually they divorce, leaving her a single mother of two. Informed by all of her life experiences, Sherrie feels compelled to re-establish her legal career as a 1970s attorney fighting for Roe v. Wade and equal rights, and helping abused women.
As the years go by, Sherrie pivots toward female financial empowerment, as she embarks on a new, modern romance.
A story of tragedies and triumphs to which every reader can relate, Farewell to South Shore not only refers to departure from a place, but also serves as a metaphor for leaving a time and culture that will never exist again.
Excerpt
“Jake, close the store and get home quick,” Tillie shouted into the phone.
“We have a major problem.”
“What is it this time?” Jake asked, as he stared out the store window at the children walking home from school with their heavy books jangling in their arms.
“It's Pa,” Tillie said. “He's on the roof.”
“What is he doing on the roof?” Jake inquired calmly.
“Stop the questions and get home!” Tillie shouted.
“What about Izzy?” Jake asked. “He must be home. He hasn't got a regular job, and he isn’t working in the store for me today.”
“Jake, you know Pa won't listen to him,” Tillie said. “He’s the youngest! Izzy went up the ladder, and Pa made him come right down. You know Pa never forgave Izzy for spilling the bucket of green paint all over the front porch.”
Jake hesitated a minute while he remembered endlessly scrubbing the porch. He smiled to himself as he pictured sparkles of green paint still on the white stones next to the red brick entrance. “Would be a great look if we weren't Jewish...,” he thought.
“Jake, are you still there?” Tillie yelled.
“Tillie, I’m thinking,” Jake replied. “There is no one here who can run the grocery store if I leave. I can’t just close it in the middle of the day. Get another family member. My customers need food for their families’ evening dinner, and my helper Ira is making deliveries.”
“Just put a sign up that Pa is on the roof,” Tillie shot back. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows Pa.”
Jake smiled at her comment, and thought, “Yes, everyone in the neighborhood knows Pa, and will understand.”
A new voice took the place of Tillie’s, and said, “Jake, it’s Sarah. You better come home quick! Pa will only listen to you. We are all here. If our father falls, it will be on your conscience.”
“Okay, okay, I'm coming,” Jake sighed. When his sisters got together with their guilt stories Jake knew he was licked. He could just picture all ten of his adult family members standing around the building shouting at Pa who was going about his project, ignoring them.
“You never let me know why he is on the roof,” Jake said as he took a deep breath. “He never told me he was going there, and he usually talks over most things with me.”
“The pigeons,” Sarah replied. “You know they are driving him crazy. He is putting nails on the roof to keep them away. If he told you, you would have argued with him about it.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Jake repeated as he prepared to close the grocery store. Just as Tillie had said, as soon as he told customers that Pa was on the roof, they shook their heads knowingly. Mrs. Abrams, as she checked out her groceries, commented, “Your poor mother, may she rest in peace.
|
