“Shikker is a goy” — drunkards (and addicts of all kinds) are not Jews. The religious and secular Jews living in Sara Katz’s neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn kept this Yiddish folk saying alive. But Sara knew it wasn’t true not for her secular Jewish family which, with the best intentions, made one poor decision after another attempting to save her father from heroin addiction. So Sara watched her father suffer in secret. The novel tells Sara’s story as the oldest child in the family. It is based on a true story, but some stories are too painful to write as memoir. Sara struggles to love her father, a kosher butcher from an immigrant family. Despite his loving sides she also fears him. She challenges her mother’s second-generation tendencies to hide her father’s addiction and her grandmother’s denial of her son’s “sins.” Driven to shed unwarranted shame, Sara discovers the untold tale of Jewish youth and drug culture in the Depression years, and author Sharon Leder learns how to help today’s families with addiction problems.
Fiction
The Fix: A Father’s Secrets A Daughter’s Search
- From the Publisher
May 16, 2017
Discussion Questions
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