Kaplan’s Plot

The first novel from Diamond (Searching for John Hughes, a memoir) weaves a rich tapestry of a Chicago Jewish family through the stories of a gangster and his 30-something grandson. Elijah Mendes returns in disgrace from Silicon Valley after his former business partners were caught misappropriating company funds. Back in his hometown, where his mother, Eve, has terminal cancer, he learns that his late grandfather Yitz Kaplan owned a Jewish cemetery. A rabbi has been trying to contact Eve about the property, which she doesn’t want to talk about, fueling Elijah’s curiosity. A parallel narrative reveals how Yitz travelled from Odessa to Chicago in 1909 as a boy with his brother, Solomon, to escape attacks against Jews in Ukraine. Searching for information about his grandfather, Elijah discovers from newspaper archives that a 14-year-old Yitz was charged with the murder of a “known hoodlum.” Yitz was cleared of the crime, but the event marked the beginning of his rise in the city’s underworld—a “little Oliver Twist,” according to Eve. Diamond crafts an affecting portrait of the bond mother and son gradually form over revelations about the past, and the narrative is shot through with Elijah’s intriguing meditations on his origins and what they say about himself. The result is a memorable tale of the American dream gone sideways. Agent: Peter Steinberg, UTA. (Sept.)