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IT’S RAINING, LET’S PLAY INSIDE
A cold grey day, Soundview Park in Seattle.
Lester San Marino and his writing buddy, Player ZH, a brother leftie.
They’re hitting short court, chipping the ball close to the net strap, feet shuffling on winter-chill asphalt.
A blade of yellow sunlight cuts through the Player MZ winter chill, January in Seattle, rain on the way, and then maybe snow.
Lester feels weird, trying to locate his old tennis rhythm.
He misses three shots in a row. Player ZH suggests a solution, the double bounce, giving Lester another couple seconds.
Ten years, maybe fifteen, since Lester has tried to hit a tennis ball.
His knees feel arthritic.
His ankle hurts.
He stumbles, almost falls.
Lester is 79. His buddy, Player ZH, is 68.

The Chaff, by Joel Chafetz
Reviewed by Robert J. Ray

The magical pen of Joel Chafetz whisks the reader out of our time and back to Mother Russia in the late 19th century, back to a village in the Jewish Pale, back to chaos and cruelty and a deep craving for order, back to the cold, the frozen tundra, the firelight on sweaty Mongol faces, back to the age of romance on the steppes.

The heroine of this adventure tale is Usell Binah, girl of the shtetl, maiden of marriageable age, a young woman smarter than all the eligible men, taught well by her father because her mother is long gone.

The core story of The Chaff is Usell Binah’s Coming of Age—she’s got to grow up fast because there are three males after her: the first one is a village lad, Moshe Gimmel, innocent, eager, sad, doomed; the second one is Captain Dmitri Rotovak, the handsome womanizing Cossack, who is attracted by Usell’s shy beauty; and the third is an American armed with a pistol and a Gatling Gun, who brings a whiff of the Old West to his jocular courtship.

The subtext to this Coming of Age adventure tale is the diaspora—the scattering of the Jews outside of Palestine, starting in the sixth century—as Usell Binah is cast from her village, unbuckled from the old ways—when she meets the ruddy-faced American, we sense that she’s bound for America, but before that she gives aid to a Princess, she confronts her past, and she handles this handsome Cossack.

Chafetz is a veteran writer of short fiction, tight sentences, smooth moves, and this debut novel is packed with solid description. From the passage below, you know this guy loves to write:

“Toward the end of the line the Hassidim had broken. They spread like a wave along an arc from the farthest hill…black robes flew behind the men and pale skirts ballooned about the women. The line on its leading edge buckled into the crease between the mounds, a fan opening on bald domes of snow….Riders crested the hill….”

The question that drives the story is a woman’s right to choose: with three eligible males after her, who will Usell select for a mate? Let’s take a look at the author’s use of the Three Goods, a sorting tool gleaned from evolutionary biology: Which suitor has good genes? Which suitor has good resources? Which suitor exhibits good behavior?

Moshe Gimmel is a sweet boy, a village kid with lots of heart. Dmitri Rotovak is a heart-throb guy, handsome, dashing, might have resources, but he behaves like a cad—and is not a guy you could train. The American, Rudd Cothman, is more rugged than handsome. He’s got a sense of humor that helps his behavior rating—but the big draw is America, land of the free, her arms open to victims of the Diaspora, where Usell can continue the education started by her father.

To illustrate Usell’s strategy in mate selection, we can use a handy grid. At the top of the grid we have the three goods—genes, resources, behavior. Down the left column we have the three suitors:

Suitors of Usell Binah Genes Resources Behavior
Gimmel, the village lad good none good
Rotovak, the manly Cossack good captain’s pay bad
Cothman, the wily Yank good America teachable

This Cothman guy knows how to survive a skirmish between Cossacks and Jews: he uses a Gatling Gun: “A burst of short, repeating explosions snapped the air. Bullets sprayed dirt from beneath the snow in front of Usell. A second spew of bullets hit the Cossack with meaty thuds and kicked him off his saddle. His blood splashed white snow….”

If you’re leaving your village, the place where you grew up, the place that will no longer shelter you, you’d be smart to latch onto the guy with the Gatling Gun.

A tale of adventure, told by a writer with a link to the past. Historical fiction is hard work, but Chafetz nails it down to the last word.

Robert J. Ray, The Weekend Novelist and the Matt Murdock Mystery Series

The Chaff