The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke

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From a stunning new writer, a rich, beautifully textured novel of Canada in the thirties, of the passions of youth, and of the looming black shadow of the Nazis' swastika, that conjures up the glorious humanity and humour of St. Urbain's Horseman and the storytelling imagination of Fifth Business. It is a summer afternoon in 1933 when our hero, Lucio Burke, knocks a great bird out of the Toronto sky with a single, perfect throw. Thus it is that Lucio finds himself pulled into history -- into contact with a radicalized labour movement, anti-Semitism, Mussolini's fascism, and onto the mound as the pitcher in the most infamous baseball game in Canadian history at the riot at Christie Pits. This is a city of new immigrants, of Jews, Italians and Chinese, who are dreaming and working their way to a brand new life, of the thrill of the talkies, and the fear of welfare. On hand to observe this incredible chain of events is 19-year-old Ruthie the Commie, as she's called by everyone (gorgeous, fearsome, committed, and convinced that love and social justice are both just around the corner) -- who seduces Lucio at the same time as Lucio's best friend and next-door neighbour, Dubie, declares his love for Ruthie. What follows is a story about young love, friendship, the nature of the miraculous, and a quest to change the world -- a story driven by the question of what was and might have been possible in the 1930s, a turning point in history when history was in the making. Unfolding against the background of depression-era Toronto, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke is alternately funny and moving, magical and real, alive with the energy of a new city. It gives us a brilliant portrait of aworld gone by, and of the lives of ordinary men and women who lived in those different days. "It is the summer of 1933. The year of the New Deal. The decade of the night of broken glass. Joe Zangara, a bricklayer from New Jersey, attempts to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt who is not quite yet president of the United States, having just been elected the previous month. Instead of Roosevelt, Zangara hits Margaret Kruis, a showgirl from Newark, killing her instantly. On the outskirts of Callander, Ontario, Elzire Dionne is pregnant with her famous quintuplets. The US Akron crashes near Philadelphia, falling, say witnesses, like a meteorite. Gandhi starts his fast. And Bloomberg, pitcher of a team named the Lizzies, walks the streets of Toronto saying he's going to give away a baseball. That summer Bloomberg is everywhere. On King and Dundas and Queen and Richmond and Bloor streets. On the Bathurst streetcar. In front of the ferry docks to Centre Island. Underneath the basketball hoops at Bellwoods Park. Outside Maple Leaf Gardens and behind the old Maple Leaf Stadium at the foot of Bathurst where the sharps play dice on sheets of cardboard they fold up when the cops come. At Kew Beach where there are white signs saying NO JEWS ALLOWED. In line at the St. Matthew Mission on Morse Street. On Saturdays outside Holy Blossom synagogue. On Sundays in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. In the foyer of the Ontario Oddfellow's Home and Orphanage on Davenport. Behind the Encyclopedia Britannica in the Main Branch of the Toronto Public Library on Lowther. At the Imperial theatre on College Avenue, during newsreels.--excerpt from The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke