A Castle in Brooklyn
1944. Eighteen-year-old Jacob is hiding from Nazis on a Polish farm. When twelve-year-old Zalman seeks shelter there, Jacob first feels burdened by responsibility, then finds in this charge the strength and ingenuity to save them both from a death march. Skipping the surely dramatic story of how the pair make their way to America, we see Jacob marrying Esther, from a wealthy New York Jewish family of real estate developers, and then having Zalman design the “castle” of his dreams in Brooklyn.
Zalman moves into the castle with Jacob and Esther. In their chaste ménage, Zalman gives Esther the emotional life unavailable with Jacob, who buries his deep traumas with work. As tragedies overcome Jacob and Zalman, the story shifts to the house, now rented first to a survivor of a Japanese internment camp and then to a sprawling, dysfunctional family before finding the castle’s true heir—Zalman’s child, who has drawn strength and resilience from her family’s tragedy.
Covering more than 70 years and multiple points of view, A Castle in Brooklyn necessarily devolves into narration and summary, with few dramatized incidents and relatively little dialogue. This tends to reduce the reader’s emotional involvement with both character and plot. Contributing to the rich genre of Holocaust fiction, Wachtel does show how surviving the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland doesn’t guarantee a “happily ever after” in America, but may become a source of pride, strength, and reconciliation for the next generation.
