Second Hand Smoke : A Novel

From the Publisher

"In Second Hand Smoke, Than Rosenbaum continues, with tact and talent, his quest for the rediscovery of a vanished world and its haunted wanderers." —Elie Wiesel

"An altogether gripping call of the seemingly endless conseuences of the Holocaust." -Chaim Potok

"Second Hand Smoke is written with passion and energy, penetrating into the roots of Jewish existence. This book is not to be easily forgotten." -Ahron Appelfeld

"As deadly on target as its title. Than Rosenbaum's literary voice is singular, alluring, and important. " —Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners

"Quite extraordinary...Larger than life, but true to life." —Richard Lourie, The New York Times Book Review

"Second Hand SMoke is a sharply arresting novel, full of bite, as disquieting its subject." —Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times

"A fierce, poignant and mordantly funny novel." —Booklist (starred review)

"A gauntlet of a novel. Than Rosenbaum proves himself a novelist of extraordinary passion and imaginative resources." —Floyd Skloot, The Oregonian (Portland)

"An expansive, challenging novel....Vivid, colorful, singular." —Renee Graham, The Boston Globe

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this well-intentioned but overly emotional novel, Rosenbaum (whose novel-in-stories Elijah Visible won the 1996 Edgar Lewis Wallant Award) focuses on the lives of Holocaust survivors who cannot achieve peace of mind or soul. The narrative follows Duncan Katz, federal prosecutor and top Nazi hunter, in his obsessive quest for justice and vengeance. Duncan's difficult mother, Mila, survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and, in 1947, fled Warsaw's postwar anti-Semitism by escaping to Germany, where she met and married Duncan's father, Herschel, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen. Later, in Miami Beach, Mila becomes a confidante and collector for notorious Jewish crime boss Meyer Lansky. Duncan, born in 1953, achieves a karate black belt at age nine, stars in high-school football and evolves into a tough, armor-plated prisoner of his own exaggerated fears, nightmares, grief and rage. Like his protagonist, Rosenbaum is the son of Holocaust survivors and grew up in Miami Beach; he writes with empathetic insight into the traumas of those who never escaped their harrowing memories, often unconsciously passing their tortured psyches on to their children. Overzealous Duncan is a time bomb. He destroys a new Mercedes because it was made in Germany; gets fired from the Justice Department after posing as a neo-Nazi in order to tape-record conversations with a former concentration camp guard whom he tries unsuccessfully to deport. Although his moral passion heats up this intense parable, Duncan's overbearing self-absorption dominates the book, and the story turns to creaky melodrama when he discovers that he has a half-brother, Isaac Borowski, whom Mila secretly left behind in Poland. Isaac, who is caretaker of Warsaw's Jewish Cemetery as well as a yoga teacher and Zen disciple, teaches Duncan to let go of his anger, a denouement that feels as contrived as it is cathartic. (Apr.) FYI: Rosenbaum is literary editor of Tikkun.

Library Journal

Duncan Katz is obsessed. The tortured son of Mila Katz, a wily and paranoid Holocaust survivor, Duncan has an overriding raison d'etre: the identification, prosecution, and punishment of every living Nazi war criminal. When he obsessively pursues a man he believes to be the Butcher of Maidanek, Duncan loses his job and his marriage. Heading for Poland, he uncovers deeply held family secrets and regains some humanity and perspective. Tikkun literary editor Rosenbaum's nonlinear plot shifts from Mila's remembrances on her Miami deathbed to Duncan's ongoing irrational behavior. Frequent flashbacks are confusingly placed within scenes, Duncan's character is flat, and at times the message is strangely maudlin. Yet Rosenbaum manages to deliver a host of well-developed supporting characters in a thought-provoking exploration of the tragic effects of the Holocaust on the second generation of survivors. Recommended for large fiction or Jewish studies collections.--Christine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, Oregon

Richard Lourie

The only simple thing that can be said of this novel is that it is about the son of Holocaust survivors who has the unlikely name of Duncan Katz and that it was written by Thane Rosenbuam, the son of Holocaust survivors and the author of Elijah Visible, a collection of stories.
— The New York Times Book Review

Janet Burstein

Rosenbaum's deftness with meataphor delivers a world often saturated with meaning. And his faithfulness to the simple givens of the natural world accompanies these metaphoric moments of vision, offering...the surprise of consolation, even of hope.
— Tikkun

Kirkus Reviews

Tikkun literary editor Rosenbaum's debut novel is again, like his earlier collection of stories (Elijah Visible, 1996), an autobiographically influenced account of the burdens shouldered by children of Holocaust survivors.