A Fine September Morning - Tapa blanda

A Fine September Morning tells a gripping tale of hate, hope, and love entwined with one man’s obsessed determination to rescue his brother. During Russia’s bloody 1905 anti-Jewish riots, young Avi Schneider shoots the leader of the attacking gentile mob, stopping the killings and the burning of his village. But in the aftermath, Avi is forced to flee to America. His darling wife Sara and the rest of his family soon follow – all except his brother Lieb, who stubbornly refuses to abandon his home. In ensuing years, while Avi lives the American immigrant’s dream, Lieb lives Russia’s nightmare: World War I, the Communist revolution, civil war, typhus, and famine. Still Lieb rejects Avi’s pleas to leave Russia. Then on the eve of World War II, Stalin’s pathological purges finally ensnare Lieb’s family. At last he realizes he must escape the Communist nightmare, but now all avenues are blocked, and Hitler’s armies are gathering. He turns to Avi, his brother in America, who frantically tries to rescue Lieb and his family with little more to work with than his own wit. Stretching from pre-Revolution Russia to post-Holocaust America, A Fine September Morning blends historical facts and fictional characters into a compelling epic family saga.

My father Ben was born in the Ukraine amidst the worst of Russia’s bloody 1905 anti-Jewish riots - pogroms. Shortly after, my grandfather Max escaped with his family to America. A hundred years later, I returned to the Ukraine. I paid my respects at a tombstone honoring the victims of the 1905 pogroms, and stood in the square where the Nazis in 1941 rounded up thousands of Jews and marched them off to be executed. Had my grandparents not left Russia when they did, I might well have died in a square just like that one. My need to connect with these grandparents I never knew arose in those moments. A Fine September Morning is the result. A Fine September Morning is the follow-up to my successful self-published first novel, Goliath’s Head. Prior to beginning my writing career, I was a marketing consultant, senior corporate executive, university adjunct faculty, corporate board member, community volunteer, and an officer in the U.S. Army. The father of a daughter and twin sons, the grandfather of seven, my wife Ann and I live with our Siberian cat, Pasha, high on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay.