This image is the cover for the book Leaving Eastern Parkway

Leaving Eastern Parkway

A family tragedy forces a Jewish teenage handball prodigy in Brooklyn to examine his identity in this engaging, debut coming-of-age novel.

1991. A fifteen-year-old Hasidic boy living in Crown Heights, Zev Altshul can hardly imagine life without handball. He has a gift for it, and that’s why he’s risking everything to play in a tournament on the Sabbath. But just as he worries about getting caught, his parents are killed in a hit-and-run and everything changes. Now his biggest worry is about where he will live . . .

At first, Zev is placed into the care of a family within his close-knit, closed community. But when that arrangement becomes problematic, Zev heads to Urbana, Illinois, to stay with his sister, Frida. The trouble is that she left the Jewish faith behind years ago, and going to her means Zev must turn his back on the only sort of life he knows.

The culture shock is intense. At first, it’s just changes to his hair and wardrobe. But then there are things like Star Wars, Shakespeare, Twin Peaks, and pepperoni pizza. It’s a world full of choices he’s never had to consider. And now, like it or not, he must decide the type of man he wants to be . . .

Praise for Leaving Eastern Parkway

“What a wonderful, evocative, gripping book—it reminds me of the thrill I had when I read Potok novels many years ago!” —Jeremy Dauber, professor at Columbia University and author of Jewish Comedy:A Serious History

“An authentic look at the joys and failings of insular religious culture as well as a trenchant depiction of the mind of a teenage boy dealing with trauma and dramatic change. When you enter the world created by Daub, you are transfixed. When you leave, you are wiser for the experience.” —Stuart Rojstaczer, author of The Mathematician’s Shiva

“Zev’s story is filled with memorable characters and hard-won wisdom, and the Yiddish and Hebrew that appear throughout lend authenticity. . . It adds up to a surprisingly universal coming-of-age novel about being true to oneself in a world that demands otherwise.” —Publishers Weekly

Matthew Daub

Matthew Daub was born and raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, near the Yonkers city line. His career as a visual artist has spanned more than four decades. His watercolor paintings and drawings have been widely exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, including numerous invitational exhibitions at institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The National Academy of Design. In 1991 The Met featured a Daub watercolor in their annual engagement calendar, American Watercolors. Daub has written dozens of articles for nationally distributed art magazines as well as a monograph on the artist, Carolyn Plochmann. Matthew retired after thirty-two years as a university art professor to devote more time to his writing. Leaving Eastern Parkway is Daub’s first novel. He currently lives in rural Berks County, Pennsylvania, outside the town of Lenhartsville.

Open Road Integrated Media/Delphinium Books