Although dubbed a novel, Up From Orchard Street is a memoir in the same way Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes was—honest, poignant, often painful, but filled with the sights, smells and sounds of the immigrant experience. Widmer’s story takes place in New York’s Lower East Side in the ‘30s, where many Eastern European Jews had settled in search of a new and hopefully better future in the U.S. Manya Roth, aka Bubby, is the indulgent mother of flashy womanizing smart-alecky Jack, her only child from a […]