DESCRIPTION:

Larry Zuckerman, author of To Save A Life, speaks to current issues of immigration and cultural identity. Through his novel, he highlights the inherent tension that generations of immigrants have felt between assimilating into American culture and honoring homeland traditions. He will speak about how that conflict divided Jewish immigrant families, and why 15 million immigrants came seeking freedom and dignity in the early 1900s--and were widely misunderstood as grifters and freeloaders.

As many as one-third of Americans today trace their ancestry to immigrants who came between 1900 and 1914--and Larry Zuckerman's grandparents were among them. Inspired by their story and his research into the lives of immigrants on the Lower East Side, he presents a gripping historical novel filled with authentic details from tenements and sweatshops to the Orchard Street bazaar, from the Yiddish theater and Tin Pan Alley to a Tammany Hall backroom. Zuckerman paints an intimate portrait of hope, danger, dignity, and the quest for freedom. He discusses the realities of early twentieth-century immigration, the forces that pushed millions to America, the cultural conflicts that shaped Jewish immigrant families, and the roles and restrictions faced by women of the era. He also explores how popular music, pre-radio, reflected everyday life and influenced a rapidly changing culture.

GUEST BIO:

Larry Zuckerman is the descendant of courageous Jews who came to America from Eastern Europe. His grandparents spoke Yiddish around him whenever they wished to protect their privacy—and their impassioned, expressive tone made him want to know what he was missing. In paying homage to their generation and mother tongue, To Save a Life expresses his love for other times and places. Larry's previous novel, Lonely Are the Brave (2023), portrays a World War I hero turned at-home father in a Washington State logging town. Larry's nonfiction includes The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World, which was excerpted in The New York Times, and The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I, which reflects his fascination with that tragic era. He has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition and delivered a keynote address at the 2009 World Potato Congress in Christchurch, New Zealand. He lives in Seattle.

https://www.larryzuckerman.com/