Friends Author Talk presents: Shirley Wachtel

Join the EB Friends of the Library as they host Shirley Russak Wachtel, the author of, "A Castle in Brooklyn."

A Castle in Brooklyn

Spanning decades, an unforgettable novel about reckoning with the past, the true nature of friendship, and the dream of finding home.

1944, Poland. Jacob Stein and Zalman Mendelson meet as boys under terrifying circumstances. They survive by miraculously escaping, but their shared past haunts and shapes their lives forever.

Years later, Zalman plows a future on a Minnesota farm. In Brooklyn, Jacob has a new life with his wife, Esther. When Zalman travels to New York City to reconnect, Jacob’s hopes for the future are becoming a reality. With Zalman’s help, they build a house for Jacob’s family and for Zalman, who decides to stay. Modest and light filled, inviting and warm with acceptance―for all of them, it’s a castle to call home.

Shirley Russak Wachtel is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  She holds a doctor of letters degree from Drew University and is a professor of English at Middlesex College in Edison, New Jersey.  The mother of three grown sons and grandmother to three precocious granddaughters, she and her husband, Arthur, have lived in East Brunswick, New Jersey for the past thirty-five years.  For more information, visit www.shirleywachtel.com.