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Waiting for the News

Leo Litwak 		Set in Detroit in the late thirties and early forties, Waiting for the News tells of a man driven by an almost religious fanaticism about trade unionism. Jake Gottlieb, a laundry driver with grand designs, spins seditious dreams of a strike against all laundry companies, beginning with his own. The world he take son is tough and nasty. Hired fists are always ready to smash the heads of stubborn troublemakers, fists that are no less brutal because they happen to be Jewish.
Knowing instinctively that his maniacal devotion to principal would inevitably loose the beasts inside him, Jake makes his young sons swear to avenge him if the time comes. In facing up to their grim oath, they must face the question of personal loyalty and responsibility that cannot be evaded.		 "Leo Litwak has written a vigorous and arresting novel about lower-class people—both proletarian and lumpen
—in Detroit during the 1930s and 1940s. He has broken into an area of life few American novelists even notice, and he has done this with sympathy, detachment and force. His main character, Jake Gottlieb, is a rough-and-tumble, marvelously strong figure, a leader in the drive toward unionization, a Jew with fighting blood, and also something of a charming braggart. He is a superb characterization, full of juice and energy
—a rarity in modern fiction, a deeply credible man of goodness."—Irving Howe
 
Great Lakes Books Series

$44.95s cloth / ISBN 0-8143-2274-3
$22.95s paper / ISBN 0-8143-2275-1

316 pages

1990 (1969, Doubleday)