Gathering Family

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Gathering Family: is a wonderful book of creative nonfiction. Spanning a century, through stories, diaries and pictures, Gathering Family is an immigrant's true story. It starts with Ruth's grandmother Sarah's amazing turn-of-the-century journey across Eastern Europe, her courage, cleverness and single-mindedness, and how three generations of remarkable women and the men they loved prospered in America. Set first in Eastern Europe and then in the Jewish world of New York's Lower East Side and Ridgewood, Queens, it contrasts Sarah with her mother's generation and with her children's. Running through the book is a mystery explained by Ruth in the introduction: "One Thanksgiving, my mother told the story of her mother Sarah and the copper pot she brought from Slonim across Eastern Europe to America. 'Mama treasured that copper pot, ' Esther said. 'She refused to give it up, even when she could have bartered it for food. She hid it when thieves tried to steal it from her, she carried it hundreds of miles, even though it was heavy and she was tired. It was her only material reminder of her life in Slonim.' After listening to the story, my mother's younger sister Ethel'said: 'Esther, I don't remember a copper pot. Mama didn't have a copper pot." 'Yes there was, ' Esther responded, 'you were just too little to remember.'' 'I would remember a copper pot, ' Ethel insisted, "and there was no copper pot. No copper pot.' Esther paused: 'Okay, so I made it up.' Real or not, the copper pot is the metaphoric vessel that holds the talents and attributes of the family women. What each takes out of the copper pot is the memoir's story. What each puts into the copper pot is the memoir's soul. The copper pot is tarnished from wear and dented from anger and disappointment. But it shines on as it sits on my kitchen counter, waiting to be inherited by my children.