Set largely among the Jewish community of inter-war New York City, this is a beautifully-told collection of scenes from Morgenstern's life. The tricky ground of writing the advice column for a provincial Yiddish daily; successes during, and hard times after, the Depression; a position at the top of his craft as a labour specialist in the New York City Yiddish press - these and many more form a portrait of "a fundamentally decent man in morally perplexing situations".
"I've been working on a series of stories about the character I call "my father" - loosely based on my own father - for about 30 years.I wondered if I could use the character in other situations. [One] story had begun with a spark of truth - a story my father had told many times about a foolish man he'd once known - and the spirit of my father.
"All the stories in the series walk that precarious tightrope between memoir and fiction."I worked hard, with the stories' structure and a sort of old-fashioned expository style, to make them feel like memoir - like truth."

Dave Margoshes has published more than a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His collection of stories, Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, was Saskatchewan Book of the Year, won the Regina Book Award and was a finalist in the ReLit Awards in 2007. His three novels are Drowning Man, I Am Frankie Stern, and We Who Seek: A Love Story. He has published four other story collections, five volumes of poetry and several non-fiction works, including a biography of Tommy Douglas.
He has had stories and poems published in dozens of magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States (including six times in Best Canadian Stories), had work broadcast on CBC, and given readings across the country. His awards include the Stephen Leacock Prize for Poetry. He was also a finalist for the Journey Prize.
Some of his stories and poems spring from his days as an itinerant journalist. Margoshes worked for daily newspapers in eight cities, including San Francisco, New York, Calgary and Vancouver, covering everything from politics to murder to cat shows. He's also taught journalism. He currently lives near Saskatoon.

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