Broken Song (19 page)

Rachel and Reuven are fictional creations, but their story is similar to that of the author’s own grandparents. Like so many Russian Jews who had lived in the Pale, Joseph Lasky had been forced to serve in the military. A pogrom in a nearby shtetl convinced him it was time to leave. Unlike most of the Jews of that era who left for America and settled on the Lower East Side of New York City, Joseph took his family to Duluth, Minnesota, to live. The author’s father, Marven Lasky, was the first child of Joseph and his wife, Ida, to be born in America.