Button Man

Button Man is Andrew Gross' semi-biographical novel about is grandfather's experiences in his rise to run a large women's ready-to-wear fashion empire. It was an interesting story about labor unions and the mob, most specifically in the garment district in New York City, in the 1930s. Lots of the names of the real life characters were familiar, but I didn't know much about them.

I hope I can hold all the questions I have in my mind straight until my book club discusses this in July. There really is a lot to discuss about this novel.

Morris was one of 6 children born to a family of immigrants in the early 1900s. The family came from Russia and Morris, the youngest, was the only one born in the United States. Of the four sons, Morris had the biggest dreams and the ambition to make something of himself. He's forced to quit school at a very young age, after the death of his father. He's lucky enough to get a job working for a clothing manufacturer. He aspires to do more than what the manufacturer thinks he's capable of, and Morris rises to the occasion.

Fast forward about 20 years and Morris has now started his own coat company. The unions are coming in to most of the shops, but the unions are run by the mob and are in cahoots with law enforcement and government officials. Morris treats his employees right and doesn't want to unionize because the way the unions are being run, they take away from the employees and basically end up "owning" the businesses. 

Besides being the most ambitious of the brothers, Morris is also the toughest and was never one to back down from a fight. So the story is about Morris having the strength to stand up to the mob. 

/In closing, because I'm persnickety me, there were two, or possibly three, little geographical "oops" in the novel. Two involved Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn - which is not in Bensonhurst and to the best of my knowledge never has been in Bensonhurst. I can't remember the other bit about Ocean Avenue that didn't make sense. (I grew up living only 6 blocks away from Ocean Avenue.) But there's also mention of a golf club in Tenafly, New Jersey. (I lived there, too, for a good part of my adult life.) And unless there was a golf club that no longer existed by the late 1980s that might have allowed Jews to become members in the '60s or '70s, then that was an "oops," too.

I'm looking forward to a good discussion of this novel with my book club.