It was a review in the NYT that brought this book to my attention and the story that the author’s great-grandfather was an important figure in the immigration of ten thousand Jewish people fleeing to Galveston, Texas from Russia that hooked me. The author has written a family history that used newspaper quotes and multiple historical figures to tell her family’s stories. It is especially notable that she rejected her “writing” to tell the story that way. She was inspired by George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. I fear her use of this technique was less successful than his. Three residents of the cemetery provided the exposition for the fictional part of his book.
In the first section quotes from newspapers and individuals describe the development of the Zionist movement in response to the persecution of Jewish people in Russia, including a massacre in Kishinev. Theodore Herzl was a founder and convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897. An English statesman Joseph Chamberlain (father of Neville) told Herzl that England could “give” Uganda to the Jewish people for a homeland, an impressively arrogant statement. A later Zionist Congress rejected the proposal in the hopes of securing a homeland in the Middle East. I was interested to see a quote from Lord Delamere, an early English settler in Kenya who turns up in Karen Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa.
The author became enamored of another Zionist Israel Zangwill, a poet and playwright and she found it hard to turn her gaze from this figure. He did say that “the success of the Galveston movement is primarily due to Dr. Jochelmann,” the author’s great-grandfather. The migration began in 1907, ended in 1914, and David Jochelmann was in New York at that time. He was married and had a son who took the name Emjo Basshe; Jochelmann moved to London and with his second wife had two daughters who with their families lived in Mapesbury Road in London. The author’s father was the son of one of the sisters and grew up in that house.
The focus of the second section is Jochelmann’s son in New York Emjo Basshe. He was a not-terribly-successful New York playwright, and gave his daughter the same name. The daughter became known as Jo and spoke with the author by phone every week for two years about the family history when she was in her 90s.
The third section also relies on Jo, as well as the author’s father, his siblings, and his cousins. One of the sisters moved with her family to Israel as soon as that was possible. Some of the quotes from this section question the practice of taking over land that is inhabited by others.
In her Acknowledgements the author says her most treasured discovery was the website Fulton History with its 50 million pages of US newspapers. A quick look made me uneasy: “support” in a section asking for money was misspelled and the page describing the database looked like it was done in the early 2000s. And she doesn’t mention that it is limited to New York State newspapers. Chronicling America, a joint project of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities looks more promising for access to historical newspapers.
I was looking for a book that recounted the interesting historical migration to Galveston; this was a family history told in a unique and unsatisfying way. The writing of history needs exposition as well as good source material.
Rachel Cockerell, Melting Point, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2025, 416 pages (I read the kindle version). The book is not available in the public library.