The book starts in Germany in the 30's. The author's Jewish parents are becoming increasingly nervous with the Nazi regime. This part of the book truly shines. The harrowing experiences and all the things that happened could probably have filled their own book. This is also the part of the book that is the most heavily novelized because the author was a toddler at the time and did not have his own memories to go off of.
However, that is not what the book is about. The escape from Germany is simply prologue to real story the book wants to tell: what it was like to be a Jewish farmer in New Jersey. Unfortunately, this subject matter did not interest me nearly as much as the earlier part of the book. There were some funny parts and some sad parts and it serves as an excellent period piece for life in 40's and 50's New Jersey.
The real issue with this book is that it appears to want each chapter to be self-contained. Information is repeated multiple times throughout the book, unnecessarily. In addition multiple chapters go off on tangents near the end, which provide interesting information, but ruin the flow onwards to the next chapter. All of this would be OK if the book was set up or billed as a collection of short stories but it is not.
Despite this, the book was interesting overall and it does an excellent job of painting the childhood of the author. If the phenomena of Jewish farmers in New Jersey interests you (as it does some people) you will probably gobble this book up. If stories of Jews in World War II interest you, this book will be enjoyable. If biographies of early life are something that is enjoyable for you to read, then this is a fair sample of the genre. Otherwise, this book is probably not for you.
I would give this book a 70% overall.
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