American Heaven

By Maxine Chernoff

Book Overview

Irena Bozinska, beset by difficulties with love, language, and change, is a mathematician who has recently emigrated from Poland to America. She works as an attendant for an aging jazz musician who longs for one last moment of musical glory in spite of his arthritic fingers. Jack Kaufman ("one of the more compelling characters of recent fiction" --Kirkus), cared for by a mysteriously sad young woman, is a Chicago gangster nearing the end of a colorful, violent life. Joined together by the simple circumstance of sharing the same apartment building, these four lonely people begin to form surprising, life-changing bonds with one another.

Drawn with Maxine Chernoff's critically acclaimed wit and lyricism, American Heaven, from Chicago to Warsaw, at the beginning of life's journey or nearing its end, is a potent, unforgettable story of hope, forgiveness, and the ultimate power--tenuous though it may be--of human connections.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566890411
• ISBN13: 9781566890410
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Challenges your beliefs and perceptions

Head of the department of creative writing at San Francisco State University, Maxine Chernoff has written a powerful tour de force with a voice so true you'll have a hard time convincing yourself it's really fiction. She creates four very different people and tosses them together in a Chicago apartment building - then allows us to sit back and watch what happens. We've got a Polish immigrant who's a caretaker for an African American jazz musician, and we've got a young woman with secrets who is a caretaker for a sick Jewish gangster. Sound interesting? It is.