The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

It's not often that I read a book where I can't stand the main character but I still really enjoy the book. Susan Jane Gilman's The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street was exactly that sort of novel.

Young immigrant Malka Treynovsky arrives in the US with her parents and her sisters in 1913. They family had planned to emigrate from Russia to South Africa to be with family. But when awaiting departure in Hamburg, Malka's mother and sister get conjunctivitis and are quarantined and Malka spends time with her father both inside their refugee camp and in the city. They are teased by some of the other emigrants about going to Africa instead of America, the land where the streets are paved with gold. After catching a few minutes of a movie in Hamburg, Malka has dreams of being a movie star. Malka's father trades in their tickets for South Africa for tickets to New York. When Malka's mother learns of his deceit, she is furious.

The reality of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1900s was nothing like what Malka or her father dreamed of. The father spends less and less time at home in the tenement. Left behind, Malka's mother is hard at work and puts her daughters to work. Including Malka and her sister, Flora, who are still very young. Malka and Flora find a way to get paid for singing - and then for stopping to sing. They also run errands for the neighbors.

During one of their work outings, Malka is hit by a cart driven by an Italian immigrant selling ices. Eventually, the ices man takes Malka in. She transforms herself to Lillian Dinello and learns the ices and ice cream business from the inside. All along, I felt sorry for Malka - and then Lillian - but she was never likable.  (The father, who has a very minor part of the story is even more unlikable! )Lillian is nothing if not resourceful and when hard times come to her and her new husband, Bert, the pair falls back on what Lillian knows - ice cream. That's when the rags to riches part of the story takes place. And if a poor struggling motherless Malka/Lillian was unlikable, a rich Lillian is even easier to dislike.

I tend to like stories about the immigrant experience. The reader is given a taste of both Jewish immigration and Italian immigration. In this book, the story was chockfull of historical references which I loved. Sometimes the historical references felt like they were pulled out of history book rather then blending in with the narrative of the novel. But for me, this worked. I loved learning about the history of soft serve ice cream. As a little grow in Brooklyn, going to Carvel was one of my favorite things to do in the summer. Even as an adult, I still love going to Carvel for soft serve. It brings back good memories of childhood. my cousin, my parents... with ice cream to boot!