With delight­ful depth, sus­pense, and humor, Vish­ny swoops read­ers into a fan­tas­ti­cal ver­sion of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when New York City is filled with both mor­tals and mytho­log­i­cal crea­tures. Clara and Mol­ly, two estries or female Jew­ish vam­pires, have exist­ed for 150 years and now present as sis­ters in their late teens. They run the Grand Dame Cin­e­ma in one of the clas­sic Sec­ond Avenue the­aters that used to make up the Yid­dish Rialto. 

The estries both let down their hair to turn into owl beings in order to feed, but there are many

ten­sions between them. Cer­tain that desire caused their deaths, strict Clara believes in two rules to keep them safe­ly under the radar: No Romance and Only Feed on Jews, the lat­ter because of the long his­to­ry of blood libel. Mol­ly, a free spir­it who miss­es par­tic­i­pat­ing in the live the­ater of her human past, has fall­en in love with Anat, a first-year NYU dra­ma stu­dent, with whom she has shared her and Clara’s secret. Clara is exas­per­at­ed with Mol­ly as well as with Boaz, a young Syr­i­an Jew from Brook­lyn who works in their box office and is always run­ning late. Still, despite her frus­tra­tion, she finds her­self attract­ed to him. It turns out that Boaz, who has inher­it­ed his aunt’s abil­i­ty to see and secret­ly speak with the dead (who com­i­cal­ly, and some­times fright­en­ing­ly, often stop him in the streets) has a crush on her, too. Even the pow­er­ful Ash­modai, Prince of Demons — who Clara vis­its to pay the rent in spook­i­ly ele­gant Gehin­nom, which is dis­guised as a night­club between derelict build­ings in the Bow­ery — tells her to loosen up.

Boaz, cur­rent­ly at loose ends as to what to do with his life, tries to res­cue Anat, who seems to have been tak­en over by a dyb­buk while work­ing on a stage pro­duc­tion of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. ​“Ikh vil nisht bre­nen,” Anat, who does not speak Yid­dish, begins to cry — ​“I do not want to burn” — and short­ly there­after she dis­ap­pears. Mol­ly, fran­tic to find her girl­friend, doesn’t trust Boaz at all and thinks that her sis­ter is blind­ed by the chem­istry Clara will not admit to her­self. Mean­while, Boaz’s friend, who enjoys hear­ing about Boaz’s super­nat­ur­al expe­ri­ences, gets them all into trou­ble with his own mis­guid­ed interference.

Gehin­nom, shey­dim, dyb­buks, ghosts of young women fly­ing from the win­dows where

the Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist fire hap­pened in 1911, flats from a pro­duc­tion of The Yid­dish Tem­pest stored in a clos­et — Vish­ny taps into the time­less mag­ic of Jew­ish folk­lore to explore the his­to­ry of the Low­er East Side. Sub­tly inter­weav­ing his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, deft­ly guid­ing read­ers with­out a glos­sary and with Yid­dish phras­es that are not always imme­di­ate­ly trans­lat­ed, Vish­ny rais­es the cul­tur­al bar in an exot­ic adven­ture through which young adults and adults can romp.