The One-Star Jew

Signature David Evanier-a story collection so wickedly funny and painfully honest you won't know whether to laugh, cry, or curl up in a ball and moan with delight New York writer Bruce Orav is crumbling. Every time his father speaks-"I thought there was a chance you'd have a bestseller sometime. I guess that's dead, huh?"-Bruce loses another piece of himself. The same thing happens at the Jewish philanthropic organization where he earns a steady, if not exactly generous, paycheck and is regularly subjected to the musings of Luther, his cynical coworker: "My experience has always been that kids are cannibals and killers." Not even the weekly volunteer visits he and his wife, Susan, make to an elderly Jewish woman's home give Bruce the chance to stitch himself back together again-every trip is marred by another wildly inappropriate and combative scene between the quarrelsome eighty-four-year-old and her African American caretakers. With nowhere safe to turn, what is Bruce to do? His therapist wants him to join a dating club, but there is only one real answer: Keep living, because the future-fingers crossed-is almost guaranteed to be better than the past. And, just as important, keep laughing. Thankfully, David Evanier is here to make the laughter part as easy as reading The One-Star Jew.