The eponymous character in The Umbrella Maker’s Son is Reuven Berkovitz. When the novel opens, he is a seventeen-year-old working alongside his father and living in Poland with his middle-class, Jewish family. He is in love with his sweetheart Zelda. But it’s 1939. Nazis have invaded his country, his city, his neighborhood, his father’s business, their home. World War II has arrived at his doorstep.
Zelda and her family flee in search of safety. Reuven is bereft. He desperately wants to get to Kraków, to find Zelda and reunite with her. And then, over time, readers will see, Reuven is also separated from his family.
More than anything, he wants to survive the chaos, tumult, persecution, and violence that he faces at every turn.
While this is a historical novel, author Tod Lending offers us stories here—unforgettable ones with equally unforgettable characters—those in Reuven's family but also in his neighborhood—and beyond.
There are relationship stories here, there is a love story, there is adventure and peril and drama.
We need to remember this. That in wars, there are human beings who are trying to live and survive, who strive for a sense of normalcy, who withstand all manner of injustices and violence and just want to find a way through. The characters in the novel who have lost so much in their lives still have the courage to dream dreams—to pursue them, realize them and live their lives with meaning. And there are good people out there, too. Reuven encounters good people—even in the midst of war.
Tod Lending shows us again and again that there is cruelty and violence in this world—but there is also a good measure of compassion and ways to make peace with that cruelty and violence and make our way to healing and joy.
Tod Lending is an Academy Award-nominated and national Emmy-winning producer, director, writer and cinematographer. The work he has done telling the stories of others in his documentary films, no doubt primed him to take on a debut novel and excel—like a master of the form.
This is not just a story about something that happened a long time ago. This is a story for us here and now—about inspiring characters who faced unimaginable strife, clung to courage and to love—and endured.
You can learn more about Tod Lending at his website. Tod Lending | Novelist and Academy Award nominated - Emmy winning documentary filmmaker.
