Against the backdrop of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the rift betwen secular and Orthodox Jews, FIRST THE RAVEN explores the repercussions of loss and family secrets, and the power of small acts of forgiveness. It is the story of a Holocaust survivor who becomes the spiritual guide for an Israeli ex-paratrooper in a tale of reconciliation.
An encounter with strange, bearded man on a motorcycle on a Los Angeles street foretells a journey of redemption for Amir, a veteran of two Middle East wars and the first Intifada. His marriage and his relationship with his troubled teenage daughter both fraying, he secretly longs to parachute again, but worries his new life in America has made him go soft, too weak to return to the skies.
One rainy afternoon, he finds respite in a restaurant run by expatriate Israelis. There, he finds an unlikely friend in Rosenberg, an elderly Holocaust survivor who makes his living conducting funerals. Estranged from his own family, Rosenberg makes the rounds of convalescent homes and mortuaries, picking up lonely strangers like wounded birds.
When Amir's daughter is implicated in a shooting, Rosenber becomes Amir's spiritual compass as the men come to terms with devastating events long buried in their pasts.
Excerpt
Amir was driving fast up Whitsett when a tiny stone flew up, and sank into his windshield like a pockmark.
Just his luck.
It was only a tiny fracture, but the entire glass would have to be replaced.
A familiar feeling began to nag at him again, almost a pecking in his head,but it had nothing to do with the windshield or even Whitsett. The avenue started off nice, green and wide at the mouth of Ventura Boulevard, sitting on the southern tip of the San Fernando Valley. A row of giant golf balls sat atop twenty-foot tees at the sleepy, nine-hole golf course and driving range. But as the street made its way north, the landscape began to change, lose its charm. The pretty homes gave way to dreary blocks of apartment buildings, rows of gas meters.
Professional Reviews
Phyllis Gebauer, Instructor, UCLA Writers' Program and author of THE PAGAN BLESSING
Leora Krygier's work has that rare quality that evokes a tingle at the base of the reader's spine, a sign that he or she is in the presence not just of a storyteller, but an enchanter.
John Bernstein, Professor of Film and Television Studies, Boston University
FIRST THE RAVEN is a first novel by Leora Krygier, but you would have not guessed it as the sheer warmth, freshness and mastery of narrative suggest a firm familiarity and ease in portraying complex, yet engrossing and captivating characters who spring right from the printed page. A spiritual and moving piece.
Jacquelyn Powers, Literary Consultant and Editor
FIRST THE RAVEN is one of the most moving novels I've read. Ms.Krygier unveils the souls of these remarkable characters as they struggle to grow into life in America while their roots remain embedded in Israel. FIRST THE RAVEN takes you places you've never been before, on a memorable journey deep into the lives and hearts of a people who search for identity, beliefs and values in a challenging new world. This is a book every American of every culture should read.
First the Raven by Leora G. Krygier
AmErica House, Baltimore, Md. 2002
ISBN:1591291666 Trade Paperback
Literary
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson,
author of This is the Place and Harkening
Authors of fiction rarely choose to tell a story because it is timely and that it especially true of fine literary fiction. Somehow, First the Raven appears in print just when interest in its subject matter is high, precisely when its message is needed.
The characters in this lovely first novel by Leora G. Krygier are Israeli transplants on Los Angeles soil. Their experiences in America are so germane to this moment in geopolitics it is difficult to imagine a more perfectly timed release. It is as if this little volume was sent to us so that we might better understand not only the immigrant experience, but also that we might see Israeli divisions that we have never before observed—at least not up close and personal as this story presents them.
The narrative centers on a journey of redemption for Amir that begins when he befriends Rosenberg, an elderly Holocaust survivor who he identifies with the Israeli politics that Amir was only too happy to leave behind. Amir’s relationship with a wife he loves is unraveling and his daughter is entangled with the kind of legal and moral morass that every parent fears the most. Amir longs for the freedom he once felt as a parachuter, feels a vague disease with his new home, a longing for his old.
Amir’s new friend is also emotionally detached from his wife and his son. The two strangers come together in a small restaurant in a Jewish section of Los Angeles only because it is so popular they must share a table. In spite of Amir’s reluctance to associate with the old Orthodox Jew, Amir slowly accommodates Rosenberg’s loneliness and in so doing finds someone who has just the right connections and character to help him through the explosions that he must face in the days ahead.
In turn, Amir’s virility, common sense and vulnerability combine to offer something the elderly Rabbi is not finding in his other relationships. We see how differences can heal rather than divide, a very real lesson for today’s world.
Krygier tells this story with sensitivity and with a command of language not seen in many mainstream novels. Consider this poetry in prose:
“(Amir) remembered his first jump, looking up into the fullness of the canopy, its lined geometry, the softness of its membrane. The flapping fabric was gossamer-thin, like a wing…”
“….she flirted with him…with competence, as if she were following her grandmother’s recipes for yeast cake-just a little but not too much.”
“Through the peephole…he could still see her, sitting on the step, round, through the fisheye, as if she were floating in an amniotic sac.”
“It was an altered sky, cloudless and mute, tinted with faint paper-white strokes.”
Part of the power of Krygier’s passages may be credited to experience. She was born in Tel-Aviv and grew up in Philadelphia. She now lives in Los Angeles, and descriptions of that city ground the work; there is not a city street or a vista out of place. Her experience as a referee in the juvenile division of the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles also gives her first-person insight into the system that young offenders must confront when they stray.
First the Raven is the kind of story that gives us something to take away with us once we have turned its last page. It may or may not change a readers’ perspective, but it certainly will give her comfort and confidence in the future. It’s hard to imagine that we could ask more.
(Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s novel,
This Is The Place has been honored eight times since its release.
Evie Grossfield, host of KTLA’s Talk of the Town with Evie, calls it
“…fascinating…I highly recommend it to everyone.”
Learn more at http://carolynhowardjohnson.com)
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
