In this sweet testament to love, loyalty and persistence, late-blooming nonagenarian author Bernstein (The Dream) explores his life's goal to be a published writer while chronicling his 67 year marriage. Having shared and supported his dream their whole ma rriage, Bernstein's wife Ruby died of leukemia before seeing it fulfilled, but lives on in his honest, unvarnished prose. Their life together begins in New York during the Depression, when young couples like themselves often lived in single rooms. (Says their landlord, "we don't call it a furnished room anymore. It's a studio apartment.") Both Jews from overseas he from England, she from Poland with poor childhoods and few expectations, they savored their simple lives together, and with their children, throughout the turmoil of the 20th century. In the difficult aftermath of Ruby's death, Bernstein threw himself into writing, eventually producing a well-received memoir of childhood on a segregated Lancashire street called The Invisible Wall. This sweet, inspiring story illustrates the power of dreams and the everyday virtue of an average American family.
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