The release date for the English version of 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' by
Michael Chabon is May 2007. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
The Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven established in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the dramatic 1948 fall of the young state of Israel, has been the prosperous home for Jewish refugees and their descendants for the last sixty years. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own tiny universe in the Alaskan Panhandle, a colorful, gritty, soulful, and complicated frontier metropolis that moves to the rhythm of Yiddish. They are proud, appreciative, and wanting to be Americans. They have been abandoned, mistreated, and mostly forgotten in a remote corner of history for the last sixty years. Their dream is about to come to an end as the District is about to return to Alaskan rule; once again, the waves of history threaten to sweep them up and cast them into the unknown.
However, District Police murder detective Meyer Landsman already has enough issues without adding the Reversion to his list of concerns. His profession has failed, his marriage has collapsed, and his life is in disarray. In all of their pending cases, he and his half-Tlingit colleague, Berko Shemets, are unable to find a break. The new boss Landsman has is both his greatest dream and worst fear. Additionally, a murder has just been committed at the budget motel where Landsman is staying—right under his nose. Landsman looks into the murder of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, out of duty, habit, and a strange feeling that it affords him a chance to make amends. However, Landsman soon finds himself up against all the strong forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are ingrained in him—as well as the unresolved matter of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who can truly relate to his deepest anxieties—when word comes down from above that the case is to be dropped immediately.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a book that only Michael Chabon could have written—it's a compelling whodunit, a love tale, a tribute to 1940s noir, and an investigation of the secrets of exile and redemption.
(front cover)