Review
In 1938 a proposal was put to
Roosevelt that part of Alaska should be offered as a
safe haven to Jews fleeing the Nazis, but the
proposal was quashed (see sidebar). Chabon's
genre-melding alternate history-police procedural is
set in a present in which the Alaskan proposal was
resurrected in 1948 following the collapse of the
fledgling State of Israel. Sixty years later, the
Federal District of Sitka is a thriving community of
more than 2 million Jews living on the Alaskan
panhandle (map), but they're about to find
themselves homeless again, as the land was only
leased as a temporary safe haven, and when the lease
ends in two months the land will revert back to
Alaska.
Meyer Landsman is a weary, hard-drinking homicide
detective...
Beyond the Book
Jewish Homelands
Over the years a number of
different plans for a Jewish
homeland have been proposed. A
1903 British proposal offered
5,000 square miles of the Mau
Plateau (in what is now Kenya)
to the Jewish people as a
homeland. This offer, presented
at the sixth Zionist Congress in
Basel, was in response to
pogroms against the Jews in
Russia. The proposal resulted in
fierce debate - the Russians
stormed out in opposition and
some groups felt it would make
it more difficult to establish a
Jewish homeland in Palestine....
