The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke - Softcover
The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke is a hilarious and memorable first novel about youth and passion, family and community, miracles and violence and baseball. This moving love story, also a richly imagined chapter of Toronto history, begins on a summer afternoon in 1933, when Lucio Burke knocks a great ungainly bird out of the Toronto sky with a single perfect throw of a baseball. Thus it is that Lucio, a careful seventeen-year-old whose father died the night he was born, is drawn out of himself and into a complicated world.
“Lucio Burke, there’s more to you than you think.”
That same night, beautiful Ruthie Nodelman, “Ruthie the Commie,” asks Lucio out on a date. Ruthie is gorgeous, committed and convinced that both love and the Revolution are just around the corner. She and Lucio have been neighbours on Beverley Street for as long as they can remember: the Burkes live between the Nodelmans and the Diamonds in three adjoining houses. Lucio was born on the same day as Dubie Diamond (and Lucio’s cousin Dante), indeed, on the same kitchen table. But this summer everything between them changes.
Desperate to do something to change the world, Ruthie is organizing a walkout of garment workers on Spadina Avenue, a wildcat strike into which Lucio finds himself enlisted. All around the city is in fervour, with new immigrants – whether Jewish, Italian or Chinese – dreaming of and working their way to a brand new life, and coming into sometimes violent collision with the city’s older, established British and Protestant cliques. Along with labour unrest, there’s also a new kind of anti-Semitism on the rise, inspired by the example of the new Führer in Nazi Germany, as well as Italy’s Il Duce.
Ruthie and Lucio’s romance blossoms, with Ruthie very much taking the reins; and as they fall more deeply for each other we discover the complex web of family and chance that brought them together: from Abe Nodelman’s past as a union organizer, to Lucio’s father’s courtship of Francesca; from Lucio’s grandmother’s long journey from Italy to Toronto, accompanied by a statue of her village’s patron saint, to the invention of the knock-knock joke in New Jersey. The book’s vivid description of family life, with all its profound love and equally profound eccentricity, is gently humorous but also very moving; it is a portrait of community amidst diversity, another way of living in a city bubbling with ethnic and political tension.
“If not for Dubie Diamond cutting off his index finger a week later, the two very well might have lived happily ever after.”
Pitching Greenstein’s Remarkable Knives at his father’s stand at the St. Lawrence Market, Dubie Diamond catches sight of Ruthie smiling at him, cuts off his finger, and tells Ruthie he loves her. After the accident–which he says, afterwards, may have been no accident – the newly aggressive Dubie takes Lucio as his competitor in a Darwinian struggle for Ruthie. The tension between Ruthie and Lucio rises when, later, Lucio finds Dubie trying to set fire to the kitchen table on which they were both born. Covering up for Dubie, Lucio stands Ruthie up; inadvertently, he also triggers a series of events that will become known as the Beverley Street Miracle.
Lucio fights the new distance that has opened between himself and Ruthie while being tracked by an assiduous Irish priest who is investigating the “miracle.” Then, with the city rocked by fighting between Jews and the Swastika Club, he finds himself on the mound as pitcher in what will become most infamous baseball game in Canadian history: the riot at Christie Pits. Events there bring this alternately funny and moving, magical and deeply realistic novel to an explosive climax, brilliantly wrapping up its portrait of the hopeful and passionate lives of the ordinary men and women of a world gone by.
“Lucio Burke, there’s more to you than you think.”
That same night, beautiful Ruthie Nodelman, “Ruthie the Commie,” asks Lucio out on a date. Ruthie is gorgeous, committed and convinced that both love and the Revolution are just around the corner. She and Lucio have been neighbours on Beverley Street for as long as they can remember: the Burkes live between the Nodelmans and the Diamonds in three adjoining houses. Lucio was born on the same day as Dubie Diamond (and Lucio’s cousin Dante), indeed, on the same kitchen table. But this summer everything between them changes.
Desperate to do something to change the world, Ruthie is organizing a walkout of garment workers on Spadina Avenue, a wildcat strike into which Lucio finds himself enlisted. All around the city is in fervour, with new immigrants – whether Jewish, Italian or Chinese – dreaming of and working their way to a brand new life, and coming into sometimes violent collision with the city’s older, established British and Protestant cliques. Along with labour unrest, there’s also a new kind of anti-Semitism on the rise, inspired by the example of the new Führer in Nazi Germany, as well as Italy’s Il Duce.
Ruthie and Lucio’s romance blossoms, with Ruthie very much taking the reins; and as they fall more deeply for each other we discover the complex web of family and chance that brought them together: from Abe Nodelman’s past as a union organizer, to Lucio’s father’s courtship of Francesca; from Lucio’s grandmother’s long journey from Italy to Toronto, accompanied by a statue of her village’s patron saint, to the invention of the knock-knock joke in New Jersey. The book’s vivid description of family life, with all its profound love and equally profound eccentricity, is gently humorous but also very moving; it is a portrait of community amidst diversity, another way of living in a city bubbling with ethnic and political tension.
“If not for Dubie Diamond cutting off his index finger a week later, the two very well might have lived happily ever after.”
Pitching Greenstein’s Remarkable Knives at his father’s stand at the St. Lawrence Market, Dubie Diamond catches sight of Ruthie smiling at him, cuts off his finger, and tells Ruthie he loves her. After the accident–which he says, afterwards, may have been no accident – the newly aggressive Dubie takes Lucio as his competitor in a Darwinian struggle for Ruthie. The tension between Ruthie and Lucio rises when, later, Lucio finds Dubie trying to set fire to the kitchen table on which they were both born. Covering up for Dubie, Lucio stands Ruthie up; inadvertently, he also triggers a series of events that will become known as the Beverley Street Miracle.
Lucio fights the new distance that has opened between himself and Ruthie while being tracked by an assiduous Irish priest who is investigating the “miracle.” Then, with the city rocked by fighting between Jews and the Swastika Club, he finds himself on the mound as pitcher in what will become most infamous baseball game in Canadian history: the riot at Christie Pits. Events there bring this alternately funny and moving, magical and deeply realistic novel to an explosive climax, brilliantly wrapping up its portrait of the hopeful and passionate lives of the ordinary men and women of a world gone by.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap:
From a stunning new writer, a rich, beautifully textured novel of Canada in the thirties, of the passions of youth, and of the looming black shadow of the Nazis' swastika, that conjures up the glorious humanity and humour of St. Urbain's Horseman and the storytelling imagination of Fifth Business.
It is a summer afternoon in 1933 when our hero, Lucio Burke, knocks a great bird out of the Toronto sky with a single, perfect throw. Thus it is that Lucio finds himself pulled into history -- into contact with a radicalized labour movement, anti-Semitism, Mussolini's fascism, and onto the mound as the pitcher in the most infamous baseball game in Canadian history at the riot at Christie Pits. This is a city of new immigrants, of Jews, Italians and Chinese, who are dreaming and working their way to a brand new life; of the thrill of the talkies, and the fear of welfare.
On hand to observe this incredible chain of events is 19-year-old Ruthie the Commie, as she's called by everyone (gorgeous, fearsome, committed, and convinced that love and social justice are both just around the corner) -- who seduces Lucio at the same time as Lucio's best friend and next-door neighbour, Dubie, declares his love for Ruthie. What follows is a story about young love, friendship, the nature of the miraculous, and a quest to change the world -- a story driven by the question of what was and might have been possible in the 1930s, a turning point in history when history was in the making.
Unfolding against the background of depression-era Toronto, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke is alternately funny and moving, magical and real, alive with the energy of a new city. It gives us a brilliant portrait of aworld gone by, and of the lives of ordinary men and women who lived in those different days.
About the Author:
It is a summer afternoon in 1933 when our hero, Lucio Burke, knocks a great bird out of the Toronto sky with a single, perfect throw. Thus it is that Lucio finds himself pulled into history -- into contact with a radicalized labour movement, anti-Semitism, Mussolini's fascism, and onto the mound as the pitcher in the most infamous baseball game in Canadian history at the riot at Christie Pits. This is a city of new immigrants, of Jews, Italians and Chinese, who are dreaming and working their way to a brand new life; of the thrill of the talkies, and the fear of welfare.
On hand to observe this incredible chain of events is 19-year-old Ruthie the Commie, as she's called by everyone (gorgeous, fearsome, committed, and convinced that love and social justice are both just around the corner) -- who seduces Lucio at the same time as Lucio's best friend and next-door neighbour, Dubie, declares his love for Ruthie. What follows is a story about young love, friendship, the nature of the miraculous, and a quest to change the world -- a story driven by the question of what was and might have been possible in the 1930s, a turning point in history when history was in the making.
Unfolding against the background of depression-era Toronto, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke is alternately funny and moving, magical and real, alive with the energy of a new city. It gives us a brilliant portrait of aworld gone by, and of the lives of ordinary men and women who lived in those different days.
"It is the summer of 1933. The year of the New Deal. The decade of the night of broken glass. Joe Zangara, a bricklayer from New Jersey, attempts to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt who is not quite yet president of the United States, having just been elected the previous month. Instead of Roosevelt, Zangara hits Margaret Kruis, a showgirl from Newark, killing her instantly. On the outskirts of Callander, Ontario, Elzire Dionne is pregnant with her famous quintuplets. The US Akron crashes near Philadelphia, falling, say witnesses, like a meteorite. Gandhi starts his fast. And Bloomberg, pitcher of a team named the Lizzies, walks the streets of Toronto saying he's going to give away a baseball.
That summer Bloomberg is everywhere.
On King and Dundas and Queen and Richmond and Bloor streets. On the Bathurst streetcar. In front of the ferry docks to Centre Island. Underneath the basketball hoops at Bellwoods Park. Outside Maple Leaf Gardens and behind the old Maple Leaf Stadium at the foot of Bathurst where the sharps play dice on sheets of cardboard they fold up when the cops come. At Kew Beach where there are white signs saying NO JEWS ALLOWED. In line at the St. Matthew Mission on Morse Street. On Saturdays outside Holy Blossom synagogue. On Sundays in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. In the foyer of the Ontario Oddfellow's Home and Orphanage on Davenport. Behind the Encyclopedia Britannica in the Main Branch of the Toronto Public Library on Lowther. At the Imperial theatre on College Avenue, during newsreels.
--excerpt from The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke
"From theHardcover edition.
Steven Hayward was born and raised in Toronto. His short fiction has won awards at the University of Toronto, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Arkansas, and his first book, Buddha Stevens and Other Stories, a collection of short stories, won the Upper Canada Writers’ Craft Award. He currently lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with his wife and two children where he is a professor in the English department at John Carroll University.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage Canada
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0676977049
- ISBN 13 9780676977042
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages400
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The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke
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(2005)
ISBN 10: 0676977049
ISBN 13: 9780676977042
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