Twin sisters Bronka and JoJo Lubinski are brought to America from Germany by their Polish refugee parents after World War II-but in "idyllic" America, political, cultural, and family turmoil awaits them. As the girls grow older, they eventually begin to ask questions of and demand the truth from their parents.
2020 Best Book Awards Winner in Fiction: Historical
2020 American Fiction Awards: Winner in Historical Fiction
2020 Canadian Book Club Awards Winner in Fiction
"17 Books to Read Before the End of Summer"-Buzzfeed
"The author's tale is sensitively composed, a thoughtful exploration into the perennially thorny issues of religious identity, assimilation, and the legacy of suffering."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Ain builds a layered world of many different characters to create a complex, difficult, and well-researched novel around the identity of the Jewish community following the Holocaust and the problems and debates it faced."
-Booklist
"A wise and sensitive work of historical fiction...ties in many themes: stories of Righteous Gentiles, a suspected Nazi living in the neighborhood under a new identity and working in a kosher deli, the stigma then of mental illness, questions of defining Jewish identity and reacting to evil, and the popular culture of the '50s."
-The Jewish Week
"All too often, books focus on what happens to people persecuted by the Nazis during the war, but I rarely find a novel that tells the story of what happens to a family after liberation . . . I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction?"
-Readers' Favorite, 5 Star Review
"At a time when the darkness of the Holocaust is being whitewashed, Meryl Ain's remarkable debut novel illuminates the postwar Jewish American landscape like a truth-seeking torch. An emotionally rich and lovingly told saga of survivors, with great sensitivity to what was lost, buried, and resurrected."
-Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible
"In The Takeaway Men, Meryl Ain tells a gripping story of lives intertwined and shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust and its aftermath. With sensitivity and compassion she makes her characters come alive and remain in our heads and our hearts long after the novel ends. A powerful read!"
-Francine Klagsbrun, author of Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
"An exceptional and vibrant first novel . . . a portrait of the power of love and the ability of family to embrace and heal."
-TBR News Media
