Horowitz traced through the dark
IN 2013, Derek B Miller’s debut novel, Norwegian By Night, became one of those “pass it on” publishing successes, with its unlikely octogenarian Jewish hero, Sheldon Horowitz, deploying considerable Jewish smarts to outwit some fiendish eastern European villains in Norway. The book won plaudits and prizes, setting Miller on his writing career.
Readers who loved Horowitz clamoured for more, and so now, finally, Miller, an international affairs expert, has brought us Sheldon’s back-story, How To Find Your Way In The Dark, a hugely entertaining prequel tracking Sheldon’s life from the age of 12.
If Norwegian By Night was unusual in its unapologetic central Jewish protagonist, How To Find is, if anything, even more Jewish. Miller and his wife Camilla have two young children, so the early scenes in which Sheldon appears have a genuine ring of authenticity, no matter the era: this is how 12-year-olds behave, at times wise beyond their years, at other times bewildered by the behaviour of the adult world.
The novel opens in 1936 in a remote part of Massachusetts. Sheldon, an only child, is devoted to his father, Joseph. Not long ago, Sheldon’s mother and aunt died in a fire in a local cinema, so the two Horowitz men fend for themselves as best they can. Sheldon’s best friend, Lenny Bernstein, who is a little older than Sheldon, is from the only other Jewish family in town, and the two boys hang out together, forming a lifelong friendship.
Joseph Horowitz, aided by Sheldon, makes his living trapping animals for their pelts and selling them. But the unscrupulous middle-men who sell the furs and skins have, unbeknown to Joseph and Sheldon, fallen foul of some thoroughly nasty Mafia types. And it’s not long before the motherless Sheldon loses his other parent: his father, driving a borrowed truck from the aforementioned middle-men, is shot dead by a Mafia hitman.
Sheldon is shipped off to his remaining family in Connecticut, where he finds that Uncle Nate, his father’s brother, has changed the family name from Horowitz, in an effort to assimilate. British Jewish readers may be amused by Derek Miller’s ironic choice of surname for Nate and his children, Abe and Mirabelle — Corbin.
Sheldon’s cousins are quite a bit older than he is but gradually the trio work together to combat antisemitism. Much of the early part of the book revolves around Sheldon’s painstaking efforts to find out who is ultimately responsible for his father’s death, and how to exact revenge.
By the time he and Lenny are in their mid-teens, however, the action has moved to the comedy circuit of the Catskill hotels, and Miller provides Lenny with some excruciating comic routines. Let’s put it this way: Woody Allen he ain’t — but he is still quite funny.
We take leave of the ever resourceful Sheldon as a young adult, newly married and making his way in New York. Fans of Horowitz may feel, as I do, that there is surely more to come.