“a richly detailed and deeply moving saga”
David Abromowitz's debut novel carries the reader along on an epic immigrant journey across three continents.
Jacob Itzkowitz, a teenager with a knack for handling horses, leaves behind his village of Shavlan and the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia to seek his fortune in the 1880s gold rush boom in South Africa. His skills and brashness attract the attention of a Boer leader who convinces Jacob to undertake a dangerous, clandestine mission. After completing the harrowing task and collecting his reward, Jacob stealthily returns to Shavlan to take a bride, Shira —a spirited young woman who conceals her own secret. Together they venture to build a new life in early 20th Century America, where Shira’s secret ripples through two more generations and provokes intra-family strife. Their strong wills enable Jacob and Shira to succeed in a strange new land, while creating clashes, fueling feuds, and sowing the seeds for a complex legal battle over inheritance.
Compulsively readable and propelled by a deep compassion for its characters, "The Foxtail Legacy" explores the external and internal pressures on three generations who straddle the chasm between the Old World and the New, and the legacy of a patriarch in relentless pursuit of the American Dream.