The Pinch: a History, a Novel / Steve Stern 348 pp.

A fanciful if kitschy tale of Muni Pinsker, escaped from Siberia and newly landed in the Pinch, Memphis' Jewish neighborhood circa 1911. Muni takes up the writing of the stories of the residents of the Pinch, most of them larger than life. A character in the book is Lenny Sklarew, an aimless young man in the Pinch of 1968 as the sanitation workers' strike percolates in the spring of that year. Lenny comes across Muni's book and finds that he is a character in it. Terrific dialogue, magical and funny; this would have made a wonderful 100-page novella.