when there is crime to fight, landsman tears around sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket.

my harry potter book collexion [not to be confused with my hp dvd collexion] were lost but now are found. they were in a bin under a couple cigar boxes and a framed picture of beavis, a bin which was packed up way way way back in the fall when the housepainters were here. i had planned to read hp again but because i couldn't find them right away -- can't be without a reading-book!!!! -- i pulled off the stack: the yiddish policemen's union by michael chabon. i haven't read any of his stuff before, but i had heard good things about this book. i found this copy, which lived a former life as a liberry book, in the used bookstore near graceland the last time i was there visiting elvis+family. it's a detective story set in a community of jewish ww2 refugees in alaska, so right off the bat there it sounded good - detectives stories are a favourite genre and alaska is a favourite setting.

i'm just a little ways into it and it's pretty good so far. the only complaint i have is that it's a tad heavy on the yiddish, but jeez ace, what were you expecting, siamese? some of the words i can pick up on context, but i might need a dictionary before it's all said and done.


the characters are jews who were moved to the safety of alaska after the revelations of the holocaust and the collapse of the fledgling jewish state in 1948. as we all know, there IS a jewish state of israel to this day, and as we all may not know, the jewish settlement in sitka was a proposal which did not... (see the light of day? come to fruition? develop? grow? prosper?) take root. the US secretary of the interior in 1948 was a man named harold ickes, and mr ickes proposed a jewish settlement in sitka, but president franklin roosevelt didn't support the plan without some fairly strict conditions, and without the president's support, the plan didn't succeed. for more info, you can google slattery report or jewish sitka.

i suspected but did not know for sure that this was an alternate history novel. i mean, duh, i knew it was fiction, but i didn't realize the setting was based on completely skewed history. it's cool to have had this trigger into learning something, but it's disconcerting to think i would have just merrily gone along thinking there were dozens of thousands of displaced jews in alaska the past 65 years. (c'mon, ace, you idiot!)

after i complete this exploration into an alternate history, i will revisit the completely fictional (or is it?) hogwarts and its environs. after those 7 tomes, i will likely take a stab at the fountainhead, but that seems more a book for studious autumn, not playful summer weeks.