Book Club Discusses "The Jew Store"

The book club meets to discuss The Jew Store: A Family Memoir by Stella Suberman, published in 1998.  According to a book review in the Foreword:

"Suberman recalls her early life in northwest Tennessee in a small town where they were the only Jewish family and the Ku Klux Klan's influence determined who was welcome—or, at least, tolerated.

"Nearly every small southern town in the 1920s had a Jew store—that is what people called it—a modest establishment selling soft goods—clothing and domestics bedding, towels, yard goods—to the poorer people of the town—the farmers, the sharecroppers, the blacks, the factory workers.

...

"This is so much more than a depiction of a time when a small store could thrive. It's the story of an ebullient and remarkable man and the dramatically differing personalities of his wife and children. It's the story of how the era of euphoria and plenty ends as the Depression takes hold and chain stores begin a way of merchandising unknown before. With splendid characterization, it reads like a novel with a minute-by-minute crisis."

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