The Lost Shtetl

"What if there was a town that Hitler missed? For over fifty years the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol has existed virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared of the Holocaust and Cold War, Kreskol has enjoyed an isolated peace. But when a marriage dispute spirals out of control, Kreskol is suddenly rediscovered and brought into the 21st Century. Pesha is in a loveless, arranged marriage and summons the courage to escape Kreskol on foot. But when her husband goes after her, panicked town leaders (protecting secrets of their own) send a woefully unprepared young man out to bring them home. The orphaned outcast named Yankel--unlearned, functionally illiterate (his Yiddish is useless to the modern-day outside world), and tagged with an inconceivable origin story--soon finds himself in the care of a psych ward. But when the truth comes out about his origins, his name is splashed across the covers of Polish newspapers. Ready or not, Poland commits to returning Yankel to Kreskol, and reintegrating the town that time forgot. In the course of doing so, the devious origins of the town's disappearance come into the light. And what has become of those runaways? Kreskol, torn asunder by disagreement between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, may soon be forced to make a choice or disappear altogether."--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.