Sacha Lamb’s debut novel, When the Angels Left the Old Country, is a poignant, funny, adventurous story filled with Jewish folklore, dark realities of the immigrant experience, and the blossoming of unexpected love.
A synopsis:
Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, that it doesn’t have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.
Along the way, the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.
This book had such a delightful innocence and honesty to it, even as tendrils of wickedness and danger coursed through much of the story. I want to say this book is part historical fiction, as the author does an amazing job of detailing the perils of the characters’ journey from Poland to Ellis Island and New York City.
I so appreciate how Sacha Lamb let us into the minds of Little Ash and Uriel, and what it meant for each of them to discover who they were and what they meant to each other. Lamb handles questions of gender and sexual identity with a light, sincere touch that just breaks the reader’s heart wide open. I loved Rose for the same reason, as well as her infectious enthusiasm for tackling life head-on. I was totally invested in the way these three fought for each other and their fellow Jewish immigrants.
The author includes a glossary of Aramaic, Yiddish, and Hebrew terms used throughout the book, which I found very helpful in piecing together some of the cultural and folkloric contexts in the story, with which I was barely familiar. After getting over my initial disorientation with this, I found myself enveloped in the rich, enchanting world of this story and these characters.
BOOK:30 