Mel Klein brings back a voice rarely heard today in Amer­i­can short fic­tion, the voice of Bernard Mala­mud, Saul Bel­low, Isaac Bashe­vis Singer, who wrote from a Jew­ish per­spec­tive about the strug­gles of ordi­nary peo­ple with the every­day tra­vails of life: love, hate, mar­riage, heart­break, duty, lust, guilt, dis­place­ment, fail­ure, pain, sick­ness, aging, death.

The ten sto­ries in this col­lec­tion dis­play a wide range of both scope and genre.“Elza of Prague” is a dra­mat­ic thir­ty year search for a lover lost in the roundup after the Prague Spring. At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, ​“Fazoo­zle” is a side-split­ting lark in which a young man comes up with a bizarre baby name to aggra­vate his over­bear­ing moth­er in law.

In the lead sto­ry, ​“Wet Shoes”, an ordi­nary shoe store own­er takes in an ille­gal alien shiv­er­ing in a snow storm, and begins a hero­ic res­cue effort, return­ing the kind­ness of a stranger long ago. It is an uplift­ing tale that reaf­firms the decen­cy of ordi­nary peo­ple and the con­nec­tions between us. 

These sto­ries are about real, three dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters, and have strong dra­mat­ic arcs, with begin­nings, mid­dles and ends. They leave you think­ing. And feel­ing. And some­times crying.