This Is How It Begins

September 15, 2017

Ludka Zeilonka and husband Izaac remember the past all too well, and now they fear they are being made to repeat it. At age 85, Ludka is still active as an art professor. Both Izaac and son Lolek are distinguished Massachusetts politicians. Grandson Tommy enjoys teaching until he is abruptly fired, along with several other gay high school teachers, for supposedly silencing the Christian students in their classes. This is followed by rocks through the window and outright assault, which sends Tommy to the hospital. The teacher firings were instigated by Warren Meck, a fundamentalist local radio host who reasons that if he can establish such sentiments in liberal Massachusetts, he will make headway on the national stage. Yet Warren abhors violence and is uneasy at the turn his followers are taking. Meanwhile, Ludka receives a disturbing message about a secret she has kept since the dark days of the Warsaw ghetto and the Holocaust, as she and Izaac take a grueling trip to Poland. VERDICT Dempsey's fine debut, set in 2009, explores how hate, fear, and intolerance cast a lifelong shadow. Current events have only made this gripping story more relevant.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
Massachusetts, 2009. Teacher Tommy Zeilonka has just been fired. When 10 other teachers from around the state are fired at the same timeall of them gay, like Tommyit is obvious that some sort of organized effort is behind these actions. Indeed, the firings are the work of a fundamentalist church headquartered in Tommy's hometown. Among those leading the action against the teachers is radio host Warren Meck, who has been called the next Rush Limbaugh. But this is only half of Dempsey's ambitious story. The other half involves Tommy's Polish-American grandmother, Ludka, who as a teenager in Poland during WWII saved the Jewish boy who would become her husband. A professor of art emerita, she is secretly involved with a missing painting that is a masterpiece of contemporary Polish art. How these plot strands come together is the substance of Dempsey's fine first novel, notable for the evenhanded way it addresses hot-button issues. The result is a timely and memorable story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)