Tinker's Son

The Tinker's Son illuminates the painful moral choices faced by a rabbinical student in 1870s Imperial Russia after he is drafted into the Tsar's army and unwittingly hurts the woman he loves.

This work of historical fiction, the second novel by the journalist Paul Horvitz, is a wartime love story. Yakov Leibovich, a brilliant but inexperienced young man, is constrained by the traditions of his faith. His isolated shtetl life in the Pale of Settlement, a vast ghetto that crimps the aspirations of Russia's Jews, is upended by a conscription notice. Yakov's father and rabbi craft an exemption to keep him from becoming cannon fodder, but the scheme forces Yakov to acquiesce in an unethical act. When he realizes he has deeply harmed people he cares about, he embarks on a quest for forgiveness that propels him into battle, espionage, personal tragedy, and, ultimately, redemption. The Tinker's Son follows Yakov's intellectual and emotional maturation during the Russo-Turkish War as he encounters some of the era's most prominent generals, rabbis, and oligarchs. It captures the nationalistic and religious ferment that shaped Russian history and the future of Russia's Jews as they haltingly emerged from isolation into the modern era, even if it meant pursuing a risky escape to the promise of a better life.