A Castle In Brooklyn

More than 24 hours after finishing A Castle in Brooklyn by Shirley Russak Wachtel, I still have such mixed feels about it. A Castle in Brooklyn is one of my Amazon Prime First Read selections. I mean, how could I not pick a book with Brooklyn in the title that is actually set in Brooklyn?

Jacob and Zalman meet as teens while hiding from the Nazis in a farm in Poland. They are found, captured, and en route to a concentration camp when miraculously they escape. Eventually, the two young men make their way to America. Jacob settles in Brooklyn with an aunt and uncle. Zalman, well, Zalman ends up on a farm in Minnesota. The farm of a Jewish farmer in Minnesota. It's unclear to me exactly how he ended up there? And that is my reason for having very mixed feelings. At one point, it seemed as though someone he met in a displaced persons camp recommended he go the farm route. At another point, it states that a cousin of his (in Brooklyn?) suggested he go to Minnesota and work on a farm. (I wish the author would have included a quick chapter explaining how both Jacob and Zalman got to the United States and when.)

That's just one of the inconsistencies that I found in the book. I have probably mentioned before that I'm a nitpicker. And there were so many inconsistencies that started to make me crazy. I felt as though lots of the timeline was off. Some chapters had the years included. Others did not, and in those, the passage of time was often not clear. Other things also didn't make sense. Like why would anyone ask a person who owns rental property and does some apartment development to look for an apartment just so they could see what's out there. 

Other questions I had:

1. Was there a subway stop a 5-minute walk from a house in Mill Basin?
   
2. Was there a restaurant called Wolfie's on Bedford Avenue near Brooklyn College in the 1960s?
3. Are any of the lots in Mill Basin large enough that in the 1990s there would be woods behind a home?
4. Leaving Brooklyn, could you drive only an hour south and be in a completely rural area?
5. Why would there be a reference to Presidents' Day in the 1970s? Weren't we still celebrating Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday separately? And if there was Presidents' Day, why would Jacob say that he'd leave any work he needed to do until Monday. Presidents' Day has always been on a Monday.

By including a few of my other questions, I feel like I'd be giving too much of the story away.

Don't get me wrong. This is a lovely story about finding the American dream. It's about a strong friendship between two men. It's about a close friendship between a woman and a man. It's about childhood, parenthood, loss, and moving on. Much of it I was able to relate to because my first husband was a child of Holocaust survivors. Things that might seem odd to someone unfamiliar with survivor mentality might question why two friends might live together once they get to the United States. The arc of the story worked although I wish some of the events had been more flushed out. I also loved seeing some of the references to Brooklyn. Ebinger's black out cake. Barracini assorted chocolates.

Would I recommend this book? I'm not sure. There are so many good books out there. This one was merely okay.