Jake’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships.

With engaging wit and originality, David Spaner does for Vancouver what writers like Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth did for Montreal and Newark. Jake Feldman grows up on Keefer Street in the dynamic working-class immigrant neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver. While other cities have ethnic neighbourhoods, in the 1930s Strathcona was a “neighbourhood of ethnic neighbourhoods” including Jewish, Italian and Asian communities. This is the first novel to bring to life the vibrancy of Strathcona and its largely Jewish Keefer Street.

Jake’s left-wing, rabble-rousing street politics of his youth eventually lead him to leave Depression-era Vancouver to join the international volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. But his return home is unheralded and his idealism is worn down by the mundaneness of everyday life and family conflict.

Fifty years later, he recaptures the passion of his youth during a reunion of civil war volunteers in Spain. Keefer Street explores how to preserve your idealism in order to live a life of purpose.