"A truly fine debut" - Rodge Glass. 1911. Young Avram Escovitz is shipped off to Scotland to escape conscription into the Russian army. Living in the heart of Glasgow's tight-knit Jewish community, he dreams of playing for Celtic FC until World War I intervenes and he is sent to work as a credit draper, peddling goods on credit to the crofters and villagers of the Western Highlands. A stranger in a strange land, Avram is faced with the challenges of setting up a new business and capturing the heart of a Highland lass. But how easy will it be to shake off his Jewish roots? The award-winning The Credit Draper is the first book in J. David Simons' magnum opus, a loose trilogy following his interconnected cast of characters from Glasgow to Galilee. The story continues with The Liberation of Celia Kahn and is concluded in the finale, The Land Agent, published in October 2014. Touching on issues of identity, displacement, community, feminism, alcoholism, socialism and idealism, the novels provide a valuable literary record of the Jewish community.

The Credit Draper

Simons, J. David

Two Ravens Press

The personal collides with the political in this literary tour-de-force. In the 1950s, an eminent British writer pens a novel questioning the ethics of the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki--but soon he's trying to outrun his own past. Hakone, Japan, 2003. An eminent British writer in his 70s, Sir Edward Strathairn, returns to a resort in the Japanese mountains where, in his youth, he spent a beautiful,&nbsp;snowed-in winter. It was there he wrote his best-selling novel, The Waterwheel, accusing America of being in denial about the horrific aftermath of the Tokyo firebombings and the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. London, England, 1952. A young Edward falls in love with an avant-garde American&nbsp;artist, Macy. After their tumultuous relationship and breakup, he heads for Japan, where&nbsp;he is smitten again as he writes the novel that makes him famous.&nbsp; This is as much a thrilling romance as it is a sensitive exploration of blame, power and&nbsp;guilt in postwar America and Japan. With a narrator whose behavior strikes the national&nbsp;conscience as much as his own, An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful will stay with&nbsp;readers long after the final page is turned.

An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Saraband

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simons, J. David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Simons, J. David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simons, J. David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Credit Draper

An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful