American Heaven [Hardcover]

Maxine Chernoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

Maxine Chernoff's style is clear, lyric and moving--very human.--Sara Paretsky

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When mathematician Irena Bozinska tires of life in post-Communist Poland, she leaves for America, where she finds work as the paid companion of Harrison Waters, an elderly black pianist. Her best friend is Elizabeth O'Conner, nurse and bed companion to Jack Kaufman, a gangster and real estate mogul who lives next door. Bozinska may be the center of the story, but Kaufman is its heart. In Kaufman, Chernoff (whose earlier works include Bop, Signs of Devotion and Plain Grief) has created a character who, in his own words, is "like a force of nature when it comes to knowing what I want."

From Publishers Weekly

Irena Bozinska, a mathematician who has emigrated to the U.S. from postcommunist Poland, works as a home attendant for retired jazz musician Harrison Waters. In the laundry room of her building, she meets Elizabeth O'Connor, another attendant, whose employer and "sugar daddy" is Jack Kaufman, a rich, dying Chicago gangster. Eventually, all four become involved in one another's lives, and numerous mathematical possibilities present themselves as they search for heaven in America. The action goes back and forth in time, and several generations make appearances (e.g., Elizabeth and Jack's grandson, for instance, who is filming and recording his grandfather's life story). Chernoff (Signs of Devotion) extends herself in this ambitious novel, with meticulous attention to detail, a variety of distinct narrative voices and the ability to make readers care about her characters. Will Irena's lonely, widowed mother be able to maintain her tenuous tie to Irena's selfish mathematician boyfriend through a cat? How long will Jack's rich memories (of his Chicago boyhood as a soldier in the underworld and his childhood sweetheart wife) sustain him in his fight against cancer? Though each character winds up with a solution to his or her problem, Chernoff's implicit question still remains: What would have happened if they each had made other choices?
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890411
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890410
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,827,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenges your beliefs and perceptions, September 20, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Heaven (Hardcover)

Head of the department of creative writing at San Francisco State University, Maxine Chernoff has written a powerful tour de force with a voice so true you'll have a hard time convincing yourself it's really fiction. She creates four very different people and tosses them together in a Chicago apartment building - then allows us to sit back and watch what happens. We've got a Polish immigrant who's a caretaker for an African American jazz musician, and we've got a young woman with secrets who is a caretaker for a sick Jewish gangster. Sound interesting? It is.