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Have Books, Will Travel
Four new volumes offer four summer getaways. by Sandee Brawarsky Binnie Kirshenbaum’s novel “The Scenic Route” (Harper Perennial) opens in Florence, Italy. Sylvia Landsman, 42, divorced and recently out of work, travels to Italy, where she has never been. Sitting at an outdoor café and looking out over hills and ruins and at a handsome American in a kelly green polo shirt at the next table, she dribbles espresso down the front of her white dress. He offers a white handkerchief and welcome conversation. She and Henry, who happens to be married and middle-aged, set off on an adventure across Europe, their scenic route along 
“Gone to the Dogs” by Mary Guterson (St. Martin’s) is a very funny, witty novel about heartbreak and dognapping and the difficulties of letting go. When Rena’s fiancé drops her, her family begins fixing her up with every eligible Jewish man within a 100-mile radius. Meanwhile, her divorced mother is about to marry and her newly Orthodox sister suddenly stops wearing her wig. The two sisters look anew at their family and connections to each other. The author, the sister of novelist David Guterson, has also written “We Are All Fine Here.” In “The Red Squad” (Pantheon), E.M. Broner shifts between the present and the 1960s, when a group of graduate students — a likeable bunch of political activists including a young priest leaving the Catholic Church, a gay poet, a married man they call “Farmer,” and a young man longing to move to Israel — gather in the “bullpen” of the English department. When the Greek-American member of the group receives an unsolicited copy of her Freedom of Information file about her activities, she begins to piece together the mysteries and even betrayals of their lives; one member of the group became a spy and another went underground. The novel is alive with passion, humor and also compassion. Broner, the author of 10 previous books including “A Weave of Women” and “Mornings and Mourning,” again showcases her talent and big heart. “Abel Kiviat, National Champion: Twentieth Century Track & Field and the Melting Pot” by Alan S. Katchen (Syracuse) is an extensive and well-written biography of a man known as “the Hebrew runner,” who was an Olympic medal winner in the metric mile. The oldest of seven children in a Yiddish-speaking family, he competed as a member and star of New York’s Irish-American Athletic Club. Going into the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, he was the world record holder for 1500 meters, and considered the favorite to win the Gold. But, but he was passed in the homestretch. For Kiviat, to compete for the United States was “the most wonderful thing in life particularly for a little Jewish boy.” Katchen writes of Kiviat’s experience in the 1912 Olympics, when he and an African-American sprinter were mostly segregated from the rest of the Ivy League runners on the American team. Kiviat died in 1991 at age 99, just a few months before he was expected to carry the torch at the Barcelona Olympics as the oldest Olympic medal winner. Katchen, who has taught history at several universities, spent more than 20 years as a regional director for the Anti-Defamation League. “From Ghetto to Ghetto: An African American Journey to Judaism” by Ernest H. Adams (iUniverse) is a memoir of New York City, a great Jewish story, powerfully told, with true tales inside that will shock and also inspire. With roots in Harlem and the Black Power movement, Adams began his route to Judaism while in law school, and spent more than a decade involved in study before converting. As an outsider and then insider, he’s a careful observer of Jewish life. “Hold Love Strong” by Matthew Aaron Goodman (Simon and Schuster) is the story of a young African-American man in New York City, born to a 13-year-old who fought with the boy’s father over a Bic pen before the boy was born. He never showed up again. This is a coming-of-age story, set in a city housing project amid poverty and drugs, with sightlines of love and hope. The author, who is white and Jewish, was also born in New York, and has studied writing at Brandeis University, Emerson College and the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference. Goodman, who taught and worked in New York City schools and has worked with men and women recently freed from prison, created and leads the Leadership Alliance, an empowerment project that unites formerly incarcerated people with volunteer advocates. “The Defector” by Daniel Silva (Putnam) is a sequel to the bestselling work of spy fiction, “Moscow Rules,” again featuring Silva’s hero, Gabriel Allon, one of the finest art restorers in the world who’s also an Israeli assassin. While he’s spent his career in Israeli intelligence, Allon can easily pass as Italian or German. Here, in this thriller that’s also a love story, he faces off against the Russian arms dealer he defeated — but didn’t kill — in “Moscow Rules.” A memoir of the spirit and the tool box, “Building a Home with My Husband: A Journey through the Renovation of Love” by Rachel Simon (Dutton) chronicles how fixing up an imperfect house leads to rebuilding relationships that are also in need of improvement. Simon writes of her row house in Wilmington, Del., but could easily be reflecting on Park Slope or the Upper West Side. She’s the author of another compelling memoir of inner life, “Riding the Bus with My Sister,” about taking public transportation with her developmentally disabled sibling. “Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry” edited by Andrew Blauner makes for good Father’s Day reading. Included are essays by Philip Lopate, Pete Hamill, Jay Neugeboren, Hebert Gold, and Darin Strauss, with a foreword by Frank McCourt. Lopate speaks with candor about his defining relationship with his older brother, Leonard Lopate, a radio personality, about their parents, and his desire for intimacy amidst their public lives. “Together we look forward to sharing all the pleasure of old age: nostalgia, illness, incontinence, senility, abandonment. We will not abandon each other, I hope, because the world is less lonely for me as long as my brother is in it,” he writes. The book concludes with an interview by Blauner of the writers Nathaniel Rich and Simon Rich, sons of New York Times columnist Frank Rich, on the subject of brotherhood — who shift quickly and comically from brotherly competition to loyalty and defense, ready to take on the seven Blauner brothers.
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