In poet George Ellenbogen’s exquisitely-written memoir, the discoveries ripple outward. What surfaces–the markers of his parents’ navigation in a new world and his own childhood and adolescent experiences in the 1940s and 50s–extend to us all. They become part of the universal map in which we recognize our own quirky courses into childhood, adolescence, adulthood.
Stone in My Shoeis the author’s discovery of how Montreal’s immigrant neighborhood–a tight-knit community- with extended families that had its own shops, institutions, and daily Yiddish newspapers, sustained him and his family, and sustained thousands.