Black and Blue Jew — Chester Aaron

Chester Aaron has successfully wedded the tall tale to modern realism in an entertaining collection of novellas, which, together, tell the unforgettable life story of Ben Kahn. The reader of this marvelous novel gets to know a remarkable man, a man who is haunted by the stench of war after he champions an unlikely champion, a man who loves and loses his wife only to regain their life together, a man who has a passion for loving and not loving women statuesque and scarred, bitter and generous. A man both of principled self-indulgence and of self-defying principle, Ben finally speaks his mind in a last, desperate attempt to right a decades-old wrong.