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Melting Point: Family, Memory And The Search For A Promised LandStock informationGeneral Fields
Special Fields
DescriptionOn June 7th 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail into the Atlantic. It is heading not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamt, but to Texas. The man who persuades the passengers to go is David Jochelmann, Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather. It marks the beginning of the Galveston Movement, a forgotten moment in history when 10,000 Jews fled to Texas in the lead-up to WWI. The story is told in a highly inventive format: there is no 21st-century narration. Instead the author weaves together a vivid and colourful account from an extraordinary array of sources - letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles and interviews. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York and Jerusalem - as their lives intertwine with some of the most significant figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history, or brush it off like dust and melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks questions of belonging, identity, and what can be salvaged from the past. |