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Pub date October 21, 2025

​Cennan Books of Cynren Press

ISBN 9781947976573

Price $18.00 (USD) Paperback, $9.99 Kindle edition

In his latest novel, Zuckerman delivers a haunting exploration of trauma, resilience, and the fight to claim one’s own life, taking readers on two strangers’ intersecting journeys through the sweatshops, tenements, and picket lines of early 20th-century New York. 1909. Malka Kaminsky steals her dowry and flees Russia for New York, trading one peril for another. The Lower East Side grinds her down until a violent strike brings Yaakov Rogovin, a fellow immigrant, to her rescue. She offers no thanks. He stays guarded.

Both chase new lives—he through music, she through dressmaking—hoping freedom can quiet their fears. When Malka’s rejected fiancé arrives to drag her back, she turns to Yaakov. They are left to confront what survival and love will take from them. The narrative carries readers through a landscape humming with risk and fragile longing. Strikes erupt, loyalties are tested, and small choices ripple with lasting consequences. More than a backdrop, the Lower East Side comes out as a place where dreams hang just out of reach and survival exacts a price. Through it all, the novel captures the aching tension of those caught between the worlds they know and the lives they long to build. Brutal and tender in equal measure, this is a winner.

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