In My Father's Bakery A Bronx Memoir Author:Marvin Korman This beautifully written remembrance restores to life -- in all its color, humor and magic -- a vanished New York neighborhood of European Jews, Irish Catholics, and others as it was during the Depression and through World War II. The author unrolls before you prizefights in the Bronx Coliseum, baseball in the original Yankee Stadium and pinochl... more »e in the bakery backroom. Yet bread, the staff of life, is at the center of this work.
In an easygoing, novelistic style, Mr. Korman delivers such vivid portraits of bakery regulars that you, too, will feel you are in the bakery, eating devil's food cake and eavesdropping (while pretending to do homework) as scenes of crisis or celebration spill before them.
The author's powerful vignettes focus on individuals: among them the grocer, the baker and the local bookmaker. You will also meet a local politico, a lonely wartime wife, gypsy tinsmiths, and a magician -- who is not the only closely observed character who pulls surprises out of his hat.
Marvin Korman is too keen a chronicler to serve up mere nostalgia along with the bakery's recipe for butter cookies, the one with the maraschino cherry in the middle that mother mailed to their boys in the service. Mr. Korman's stories are delivered fresh-baked and warm, with irony enough to assure a memorable bite.« less