A brilliant tragicomedy based on the most infamous espionage trial of the twentieth century Thirty years after they walked hand in hand to the electric chair, sentenced to die for giving the gift of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, Solomon and Dolores Rubell are the targets of a new investigation-conducted not by the FBI, or some paranoid Senate subcommittee, but by Gerald Lerner, boyhood Communist and author of such classic chronicles of the American Jewish experience as Hot Pastrami Sandwich and Kosher and Topless. What does Gerald hope to find, all these years later, by placing ads in the Jewish Daily Forward and Screw seeking former Soviet spies willing to chat? The short answer: His sanity. With a gleam in its eye and tenderness in its heart, David Evanier's irreverent and incisive novel peers into one of the darkest chapters in American history-the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. Because, as Suzie Sizzle-great-niece of Dolly and Solly Rubell and star of a "goodly number" of hardcore films-explains to Gerald, this is not really a story about death, despite its gloomy ending. It is a story about love-the true love two proud Jewish underdogs had for each other, and the misguided love an entire generation of American leftists had for a political system whose grand promises masked terrible, irreconcilable truths. They say love will make you do crazy things. So, too, will Communism.
"Irreverent, unflinching, and almost disgracefully entertaining."
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Fascinating events, amazing perception."
Elie Wiesel
"Written in a brisk, slangy style reminiscent of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. and the early novels of Saul Bellow. . . . [A] tragicomedy of good intentions gone mad."
