I visited Frankie every day after work to help him out to the garden. Raizel and Mrs. Brenner came often as well. The first week, Frankie had looked terrible, but just like Haskel, he was quickly growing stronger.
On one of my evening visits, as Frankie and I were sitting under a mature oak and eating the chocolate babka Mrs. Brenner had lavished him with, he shocked me by saying, “I’ve decided to quit stealing.”
I turned my head, certain that I had misheard him. “What did you just say?”
He leaned against the tree, a corner of his mouth quirked in a thoughtful smile. “Knowing how hard you’re working to get your family back gave me an idea. There are so many people here who lose touch with their loved ones. Men who run off to escape their responsibilities and leave their families to starve, or children who flee abusive homes and get wrapped up in even worse business. And it’s not just that, but tips about races and matches are gold in the Levee, and there are plenty of new immigrants who need advice on adjusting into American society. I want to start dealing in information.”
“What does your crew think of this?” I knew they had come to visit. More than once during the last couple weeks, I had walked in to find Bailey or Joe playing cards and chess with Frankie.
“Joe swears he’ll go off on his own, but I think I’ll be able to turn him around. The others like the idea. Ever since what happened to Harry, I think we’ve all been hoping for a new start.”
Fireflies darted through the sultry orchid twilight. The humid breeze carried the honeyed fragrance of late-blooming alyssum, an aroma that muddled my senses almost as much as Frankie’s herbal cologne.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” I said.
He rested his hand on my thigh. “The thing is, I need someone a bit more clean-cut at the front of the business. Someone who can sit down with families and comfort and reassure them. If I do it, they’ll think I’m there to break their kneecaps.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “In other words, you need a good mensch.”
“A good mensch indeed.” He walked his fingers up my leg. Each light touch sent a spark racing up my spine. “What do you say?”
I took his hand and pulled it down, holding it out of sight between us. “If it’s clean work, it would be my pleasure.”
He looked around to make sure that no one was watching, then leaned over and brushed his lips against my mouth in the gentlest kiss. “Then let us begin.”
EPILOGUE
Flurries of snow raced across the shipyard, carried on fickle winds that blew the gritty flakes against my face one moment, then against my back the next. Stretching to the horizon, Lake Michigan was the color of slate and frothy with whitecaps. The drifting steamboats resembled primordial creatures that the winter chill had lured to the surface.
Frankie and I huddled on the docks, smothered in layers of wool and fur, as we watched passengers stream down the gangway of the SS Christopher Columbus.
My stomach fluttered with nervous excitement. I had waited so long for this day. I couldn’t count how many nights I had lain awake, imagining our exact moment of meeting. It was hard to believe it was finally happening.
Shrill boat whistles echoed in my ears as I searched the crowded platform, my fingers numb from clutching my placard so tightly. Painted across the board were the words Welcome to Chicago, Chasya, Gittel, and Rivka Rosen!
Departing passengers fanned around me, their careless elbows brushing against my body. Several hundred breaths steamed the air.
“What if they don’t recognize me?” I asked, shifting the sign to my other hand to give my right one a rest. “It’s been nearly three years. Gittel and Rivka must be so big now.”
“They’ll recognize you,” Frankie said.
“Maybe they’re on a different ferry,” I said as the last trickle of people walked down the gangway. Everyone was beginning to disperse. Blinking the snow from my eyes, I scanned the faces of those who lingered, searching for two children among the diminishing crowd.
“Alter?” a soft, tentative voice said.
I turned at the sound of my name. A sob welled up in my throat at the sight of a tall auburn-haired woman gripping the hands of two little girls. Silver threaded the coils of hair escaping from my mother’s headscarf, and her face was more gaunt than I remembered it, but I recognized her in an instant.
All three, all still alive, baruch HaShem. I dropped the placard as Gittel and Rivka lunged at me, both crying out my name. I hugged them tightly, unashamed by the tears stinging my eyes.
“You look so much older,” I said, once they loosened their grips enough to let me breathe. I blinked the moisture from my eyes and studied their faces. Their pouty lips, doe-brown eyes, and snub noses were so alike, the twins were practically mirror images of each other.
“Gittel?” I guessed, turning to the one on the right.
Her brow furrowed. “It’s me, Rivka.”
I sighed.
“No, I’m Rivka,” said the other one, nudging her sister in the side.
“Don’t tease your brother,” my mom said as the twins broke into giggles. She patted the head of the girl on the right. “This one’s Rivka. And the little troublemaker is Gittel.”
The twins giggled and clung to each other, delighting in their joke. I smiled to hide my embarrassment. Of course the one on the right had been Rivka. She had that scar on her cheek to prove it, where she had run into a branch one summer.
“This is my friend, Frankie Portnoy,” I said, turning to him.
“Oh, I think we’re a bit more than just friends.” His mouth twitched with laughter that he struggled to contain.
“Is that so?”
“We’re business partners, too,” I explained, leaving the rest unsaid.
“Business partners?” My mother lifted her eyebrows, looking impressed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Frankie. A friend of Alter’s is a friend of mine.”
Something about the hint of a smile she gave me afterward made me think that she had known all along who I was. The thought comforted me.
“Alter, I should be heading off to work,” Frankie said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”
“Thank you for coming with me,” I said.
He smiled. “My pleasure.”
While Frankie set off for the Levee, I waited with my family as the luggage was unloaded. After securing their two trunks, we took the elevated train home. As we passed the White City, a bitter taste filled my mouth. It had been several months since the Fair had ended. There was talk of turning the site into a landmark, a vision of America’s exceptionalism and status that would endure for years to come.
“What’s that?” Gittel asked, tugging at my sleeve. She pressed her face against the window, staring enthralled at the sprawl of ivory buildings.
“Last year, there was a fair there,” I said. “People came from all over the country to visit it.”
“Is it still open? Can we go there?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s over now.”
“It looks like a kingdom in a fairy tale,” Gittel murmured, mesmerized.
“It isn’t,” I said, wishing to hold her close and warn her: don’t be deceived, those walls aren’t polished marble, they’re particleboard, sawdust, and plaster, colored white with lead. The canals had been dredged from swampland; the picturesque waterfront hacked out of the lakeside by the shovelful. No one had ever lived in those buildings, and no one ever would.
I realized it now. I understood it completely. The White City had never been a city. It was simply the hallucination of one.
* * *
A NOTE FROM
THE AUTHOR
As a teen in the early to mid-2010s, I could name only two or three YA books with Jewish main characters, all of which focused on the Holocaust. That representation never settled right with me, but it wasn’t
until the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots and the Tree of Life synagogue shooting that I realized it was in my power to change it.
I will admit that this book was inspired by anger and indignation—at the anti-Semitism I have faced in my own life, at the perpetual cycle of violence, at the fact that I cannot go into a synagogue or Jewish community center without first thinking of where a shooter might enter. I wanted to write a book where the Jewish characters weren’t just passive victims, but where they fought back and rose above the people who wished to do them harm.
The idea for this plot was sparked in part by an article I had read about the serial killer H. H. Holmes, who was active in Chicago at the same time as the 1893 World’s Fair. He namely targeted women and was believed to have killed up to two hundred victims. His case got me thinking about life in Chicago during the 1890s, and the World’s Fair in general, and what message exactly the fair was trying to send. I thought about how interesting it would be to write a book with a Jewish protagonist set during the Fair, in a time when thousands of Jewish refugees were escaping the rising anti-Semitism in Europe. The murder mystery plot came later.
In Romania during the 1890s, Jews like Alter were not considered naturalized citizens. They were forbidden from holding certain careers, and many were derided as vagrants and expelled from the same country they were born in. Jewish immigration from Romania was dwarfed by an even greater wave of immigration from the Pale of Settlement, an imperial Russian territory encompassing much of modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Lithuania, along with parts of Latvia and western Russia.
Because Ukraine and Lithuania were a part of the Russian Empire during that time, I made a conscious decision in the book to refer to Frankie and Yakov as Russian immigrants. However, at the time, and well into the twentieth century, Jews in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union were not considered ethnic Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, etc., but were instead identified ethnically as Jews on their official documents.
Up until the 1880s, the majority of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants came to America from German-speaking countries. By the 1890s, the German Jewish immigrant community was assimilated in American society, so they had various feelings about the new immigrants from Eastern Europe, who spoke mainly Yiddish and were more religiously observant.
Although Jews fled to America to escape anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism was not dead here. Nativists called for restrictions on Jewish immigration; eventually, their wishes would be granted with the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which contributed to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust being sent back to their slaughter. In the late 1800s and well into the 1900s, Jews in America faced exclusion from some schools and universities, businesses, career fields, and towns. Still, unlike in Europe, the discrimination was not state sponsored and did not accumulate into massacres, only isolated acts of violence.
In Chicago at the time, Jewish immigrants mainly settled in tenements along the West Side, in the area known as Maxwell Street. In many ways, it was its own self-contained community, with a market and various stores, kosher butchers, synagogues, and even a Yiddish theater. The living conditions there were poor and overcrowded, and primary sources illustrate the struggles and perseverance of the community.
Along with inhumane living conditions, Jewish immigrants were also exposed to unsafe working conditions. Many of them were employed in sweatshops, where they were forced to work for long hours. This led to the establishment of Jewish trade unions and socialist organizations. Like Raizel, some Jewish immigrants even followed American society’s growing interest in anarchy, leading to the founding of organizations such as the Pioneers of Liberty.
While working on The City Beautiful, I wanted to explore not just the social conditions of 1893, but also the politics. Anarchy in particular intrigued me, especially in how the political movement was woven into Chicago society at the time. Until researching this novel, I hadn’t thought of anarchy as a particularly historical movement, so it was interesting to read about the way it differed from my modern perception. The Arbeiter-Zeitung was an actual anarchist newspaper active in Chicago during that time, and the references to the Haymarket Affair and the assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick are real as well.
I think one of the things I most enjoy about writing historical fantasy is trying to work in historical details and fit the story into the overarching timeline. While I was drafting this story, there came a perfect moment when I realized that I wanted it to be set between the Fourth of July and the Cold Storage Fire. That served as the initial frame for the plot. As I continued to research, I was able to add in even more details, like the Whitechapel Club and the Brave Cossacks of the Caucasus exhibit at the Wild West Show (which, unbeknownst to audience members at the time, featured Georgian trick riders instead of actual Cossacks).
Like many things at the 1893 World’s Fair, the reality was less important than the perception. The glitz and glamor of the World’s Fair was only a stone’s throw from overcrowded tenements and a river polluted with slaughterhouse filth; while in the fairground itself, entire countries were reduced to caricatures meant to bolster America’s reputation as superior. In writing this book, I wanted to shed a bit of light on both the good and the ugly, of what I love about our country and what shames and troubles me.
GLOSSARY
besamim: Spices used in the Havdalah ceremony, which marks the end of Shabbos.
bisl: A bit, a little.
bokher: Boy or young man.
boychik: A term of endearment for a young boy or a young man.
bubbeleh: A term of endearment.
bubbe-meise: A Jewish grandmother’s version of an old wives’ tale.
chalaf: A sharp, smooth knife used in the slaughtering of mammals and birds for food in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut.
chazzan: A person who leads prayers in a shul; also known as a cantor.
cheder: An elementary school focusing on Jewish learning and Hebrew.
chevra kadisha: Literally meaning “Holy Society,” it is a Jewish burial society, tasked with caring for bodies of the deceased and preparing them for burial.
dam nefesh: A term used in burial societies to refer to the blood that continues to flow from a wound or orifice after death, which must be buried with the body.
daven: To recite Jewish prayers.
derasha: A sermon, generally preached by a rabbi in a shul.
din rodef: A traditional Jewish law that permits killing someone if that person is trying to kill another; also known as “law of the pursuer.”
drek: Manure or excrement; inferior merchandise or work; insincere talk or excessive flattery.
dybbuk: In Jewish folklore, a malevolent wandering spirit that enters and possesses the body of a living person until exorcized.
frum: Religious, pious.
Gehinnom: Literally translated as “Valley of Hinnom,” this is a purgatory where souls are said to stay for up to eleven months (or, in rare cases, twelve or more) as their souls are judged.
goldene medina: The Golden Land.
Haggadah: The text recited at the Passover seder.
HaShem: Literally translated as “the name,” this is the Hebrew term used to refer to God.
Hasid: A member of Hasidism, an ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism that originated in Ukraine during the 1700s.
herem: An excommunication or a ban.
Kabbalah: Jewish mysticism.
Kaddish: A Jewish prayer recited in the daily ritual at the shul and by mourners at public services after the death of a close relative.
kashrut: Jewish dietary laws.
kiddush: A ceremony of prayer and blessing over wine on Shabbos or a holy day.
kittel: A white robe worn by Jewish men and women during certain holidays; also a customary burial shroud for religious Jews.
kosher: Foods that conform to the Jewish d
ietary laws of kashrut.
kvetch: To complain.
landsman: A fellow countryman.
Litvak: Jewish person from an area once known as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, or, more simply, a Lithuanian Jew.
makher: An influential person, a big shot.
mechilah: Forgiveness.
Meforshim: A category of rabbinic literature that serves as a commentary on a specific book or text.
mensch: A person of integrity and honor.
meshuge: Crazy, foolish.
mezuzah: Literally meaning “doorpost,” this is a small case hung in the doorways of Jewish homes, which contains a scroll written with words from the Shema.
mikveh: A bath or water source used for ritual immersion and purification in the Jewish religion.
mishpachah: Family.
Misnagdic: A sect of Judaism that traditionally opposed Hasidism.
mitzvah: A commandment of God, a good deed.
narishkeyt: Nonsense, foolishness.
nu: An interjection that is commonly used to prompt a response, akin to “well?”
oy gevalt: An expression of horror, shock, or awe.
payos: Sidelocks or sideburns.
Pesach: The Jewish holiday, also known as Passover, meant to celebrate the Exodus of the Jewish people from ancient Egypt.
Pesukei DeZimra: A group of daily prayers recited during the Jewish morning services.
pikuach nefesh: The principle in Jewish law that declares the preservation of human life is more important than any other law or religious obligation.
plotz: To be overcome with strong emotion.
pogrom: A riot or massacre, in particular one against Jewish people in Russia or Eastern Europe.
rasputitsa: Russian word that refers to the biannual mud season.
reb: Jewish form of address, akin to “mister”; it can also be used as an abbreviated form of “rebbe.”
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