Literature By Time Period

In 1940s Brooklyn, two boys who have grown up within a few blocks of each other, but in entirely different worlds, meet for the first time in a bizarre encounter -- a baseball game between two Jewish parochial schools that turns into a holy war. With dramatic force and simplicity that seizes the heart, "The Chosen" depicts the powerful bonds of love and pain that join father and son, the communions and quarrels of friendship, the true religionist's love of God, and the tumults by which the heart is made human.

Marianne, heading west with fourteen other children on an Orphan Train, is sure her mother will show up at one of the stations along the way. When her mother left Marianne at the orphanage, hadn't she promised she'd come for her after making a new life in the West? Stop after stop goes by, and there's no sign of her mother in the crowds that come to look over the children. No one shows any interest in adopting shy, plain Marianne, either. But that's all right: She has to be free for her mother to claim her. Then the train pulls into its final stop, a town called Somewhere . . .