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Keefer Street
“Required reading for any person troubled by our world right
now.” —Maureen Medved
Jake’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the
not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships.
With engaging wit and originality, David Spaner does for
Vancouver what writers like Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth did for Montreal
and Newark. Jake Feldman grows up on Keefer Street in the dynamic working-class
immigrant neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver. This is the first novel to
bring to life the vibrancy of Strathcona and its largely Jewish Keefer Street.
Jake’s left-wing, rabble-rousing street politics of his
youth eventually lead him to leave Depression-era Vancouver to join the
international volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. But his
return home is unheralded and his idealism is worn down by the mundaneness of
everyday life and family conflict.
Fifty years later, he recaptures the passion of his youth
during a reunion of civil war volunteers in Spain. Keefer Street explores how
to preserve your idealism in order to live a life of purpose.
now.” —Maureen Medved
Jake’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the
not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships.
With engaging wit and originality, David Spaner does for
Vancouver what writers like Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth did for Montreal
and Newark. Jake Feldman grows up on Keefer Street in the dynamic working-class
immigrant neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver. This is the first novel to
bring to life the vibrancy of Strathcona and its largely Jewish Keefer Street.
Jake’s left-wing, rabble-rousing street politics of his
youth eventually lead him to leave Depression-era Vancouver to join the
international volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. But his
return home is unheralded and his idealism is worn down by the mundaneness of
everyday life and family conflict.
Fifty years later, he recaptures the passion of his youth
during a reunion of civil war volunteers in Spain. Keefer Street explores how
to preserve your idealism in order to live a life of purpose.
320 pages, Paperback
Published October 18, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 5, 2025
I liked Keefer Street. I wrote a review of it for EVENT Magazine.
Keefer Street’s protagonist Jake Feldman is from a Jewish immigrant family in Vancouver, and the novel treats him as a sort of a leftist Forrest Gump, placing him at or adjacent to some big events in Canadian history, but the defining event of Feldman’s life is his decision to join the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the unit of Canadian volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that’s always been of great interest to me. There is some Canadian fiction out there on the Spanish Civil War, but this is the first novel that impressed me (would love to receive recommendations for more).
Keefer Street’s protagonist Jake Feldman is from a Jewish immigrant family in Vancouver, and the novel treats him as a sort of a leftist Forrest Gump, placing him at or adjacent to some big events in Canadian history, but the defining event of Feldman’s life is his decision to join the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the unit of Canadian volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that’s always been of great interest to me. There is some Canadian fiction out there on the Spanish Civil War, but this is the first novel that impressed me (would love to receive recommendations for more).
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January 17, 2025DNF
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews