In Paterson

Miriam Levine's first novel is loosely based on a newspaper account of a New Jersey domestic tragedy. Her protagonist, European-born widower Ben Shein, is middle-aged, a successful furrier in Paterson, New Jersey, in the early 1940s when the novel opens. Lonely and ghost-haunted by his dead wife Tess, Ben pursues and marries the young and beautiful shopgirl Judith Karger against the advice of his brother Nat, who struggles to leave the family's fur business. Their marriage soon disintegrates, and Ben's ten-year-old daughter Susan, his only child, becomes an innocent victim of the bitter unhappiness between her father and stepmother. Levine's novel portrays the tragic side of the immigrant dream. The Sheins have all the trappings of success, yet they are caught up in an inexplicable fate foreshadowed by the ravings of the madman Joe Mavet and the taint of the family business - working with the skins of dead animals. Paterson is as much a character as any of the city's inhabitants and comes to stand for any urban American locale - where immigrants strive to assimilate as they play out the drams of their lives.