This beautiful work reminds me of one of my favorite books of all time, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Like Anne Fadiman, Eileen Pollack has an amazing sense of structure and of the important, risky, daring questions to ask. She confronts what others might shy away from, and she makes sense of it all for us. I loved learning about the brave and almost-forgotten Catherine Weldon.

Some of the key questions raised for me by this book are: what does it mean to be an insider, or an outsider, in a particular group or in a country? Does the outsider have any possibility of understanding/aiding/participating in another culture? How do we help or harm each other? Which tragedies are preventable, and which inevitable, and why? Pollack seems to show the same courage and dedication as her subject -- Sitting Bull's great-great-granddaughter invited her to participate in ceremonies not usually open to outsiders. Her trust is well repaid by this remarkable book.

With a title like 'Paradise, New York', and a cast of characters who are primarily Jewsih, one enters this book with an Old Testament mindset- that is, we wait for the Fall. The Fall we get is somewhat pitiful as the Eden here isn't a land of splendor and endless earthly pleasure. In fact there doesn't seem to be any real pleasure, earthly or otherwise, here at all. What we do have is a group of interesting characters, though they are somewhat limited in what they do. There is an interesting Faust-ian subtext, and the book is interesting and well-written, once you get around the rhetorical questions used to establish interiority in the characters.

I bought this book after reading a positive review in Hadassah magazine, and the praise was well warranted. I enjoyed the story line, and particularly the hopes, dreams, and struggles of the characters. Ms. Pollack tackled the subject of race relations in a satisfying way. The Catskills were a place I vaguely remember visiting as a child when my grandparents would make their annual summer trek. To learn something of the history and demise of the "borsht belt" made for fascinating reading. Most interestly, I mentioned the book to a non-Jewish, 65-year old neighbor when I was through, not necessarily thinking she'd want to read it. It turned out that she and a close friend worked at one of those hotels in the 1950's when they were in college. Not only did she love the book, she told me the portrayal of the dynamics of hotel life was right on target and even helped her understand some of what she experienced that summer.

I started reading this book after I read a review of it in the Boston Globe over the summer; it sounded like an intriguing book. After neglecting my work (and sleep) to read it (twice!) and after thinking about it again and again all this time, I felt compelled to put in my two cents' worth here. For starters, the reviewer didn't come close to praising this book enough. This is a fabulously entertaining, smart, touching book, intelligent and readable at the same time. I'm glad to see that other readers loved this book as much as I did (except for that last review, which is really rather annoying and confused... I mean, Faustian? The point is, this is an amazing book). Reading this book propels you into a completely different world, one where you are glad to linger and look around. This is the kind of book that makes you want to be friends with the protagonist. I truly loved this book.