5

With this new book, Jerome Weidman returns once

again to the scene of Four , h Street East to tell an-

other tale of Benny Kramer--and his mother, the

bootlegger.

When Benny s mother dies of an "accident" at the

age of eighty-three, it falls upon her son to make the

arrangements for the funeral, and more immediately,

to locate and identify the body. And so Jerome Weid-

man is launched into a dual tale: the search for Mrs.

Kramer s remains-which mysteriously disappeared

somewhere between the hospital and the morgue-

and the rediscovery of his own past on East Fourth

Street.

Mrs. Kramer had been, to

Tough and resourceful, she

put it mildly, unusual.

was totally dedicated to

the survival of her immigrant family. To insure that

survival, she had entered into a "double life": mother

-and bootlegger. But she spoke not a word of Eng-

lish, and so had to enlist the help of her fourteen-

year-old son. Benny s role in the whole affair was

first that of translator, and later, transporter of alco-

holic beverages. The situations in which this naive-

but enterprising-young boy proceeded to find him-

self caught, as he tried to collect and deliver eighteen

bottles of booze to the Shumansky wedding, are wild-

ly funny: the meetings on the docks with the blond

"southern gentleman" Walter Sinclair; the scheme to

steal the boy scout hike wagon, without which the

plan would founder; Benny s work at Lebenbaum s

candy store, with the slot machine in the back and

the Zabriskie sisters brothel upstairs; the startling

ending of the wedding ceremony itself; the coming of

Mr. Kelly of the Treasury Department to investigate

the citizens of East Fourth Street; and finally, the

uniquedisaster that climaxes this delightful novel.

Throughout all his recollections, Benny Kramer dis-

plays the warmth, the humor, the insight, and the

charm that so endeared him to readers of Fourth

Street East. Jerome Weidman h~s written another

funny and moving "novel of how it was,"