I will confess that I’m not a great reader of “romance”, either general or specifically male/male.  But it isn’t often that a book with the special qualities of this one comes to my attention, either.

Bend In The Road is really a pair of novellas written around a single constellation of characters, the members of a travelling Singspiel troupe in 1881 Poland.  Who could resist? Especially who could resist who had a drop of Jewish heritage and a background in theatre?  You get the picture.  I was sucked in before I realized it was too late.

Zingshpiel, or “singing play” in Yiddish, is a specialized form of musical theatre, involving both sung action and spoken dialogue.  Technically, some early operas, such as The Magic Flute, were Singspiel, and the French devoted an entire class of opera in the nineteenth century to the combination of sung and spoken plot – think of Carmen, for example, which has a great deal of spoken dialogue wrapped around the singing in its original form.

And here we have a detailed picture of a Jewish Zingshpiel troupe as it travels around Poland in its annual circuit, stopping anywhere where a Jewish population was large enough to make it worthwhile, and presenting plays most often based on Old Testament tales but also plays written from other sources by the resident composer-lyricist.  The details of the troupe’s arrangements, how they travelled, how they ate, how they managed sets and props and costumes, who took which roles, are fascinating and accurate.  The author has drawn on her own family background in arranging and naming the characters.

The first novella, called “In the Lion’s Den”, tells the story of Aryeh (lion, in Hebrew, or Leo in English) Nachman, the bastard son of a rich man who supported him until he came of age and then left him to his own devices to make his way as he could.  Meeting accidentally with the leader of the troupe, his good looks, facility in several languages, and native intelligence secure him a place as the new leading man, and he becomes part of the players’ “family”.  His security is threatened by a growing attraction to Daniel, one of the other players, also a bastard and an orphan, who plays female roles.  Their gradual approach to each other is played out against conflict with one of the ostler/stagehands whose rough ways with the animals already have made the leader unhappy.

The second novella, “From Stage to Stage”, tells the story of Yuval, or Jubal – the father of music in Hebrew mythos, who functions as the troupe’s composer-lyricist and plays violin while leading the little orchestra.  The troupe have been asked to create a special play to celebrate the marriage of a social-climbing woman’s only daughter.  Basing the story on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale”, Yuval realizes he needs two voices – the real nightingale and the mechanical one, and chance leads him to Tsvi Pasternak, a gardener working in the household of the climber.  Tsvi has not only a beautiful singing voice but a native talent for extemporization that fits the character of the nightingale perfectly.  Yuval’s extricating him from the climber’s household, melding him into the troupe, and along the way falling deeply (and mutually) in love form the arc of the story, with a tripled load of conflict involving the head gardener, the lady of the mansion, and Tsvi’s past.  

All of this is set against the rising tide of anti-Semitism that gradually engulfed Eastern Europe beginning in approximately 1859 and extending until the outbreak of World War I, with particular flare-ups in the early 1880s and shortly after the turn of the 20th Century.  The pogroms of 1880-81 form the impetus for the troupe’s decision to emigrate to the United States, and a major consideration in the story of Yuval and Tsvi is whether and how Tsvi will accompany the players.

Barrack’s style is simple and engaging.  Reading the story with a background in theatre and a cultural Jewish heritage to draw on may have biassed me in that the people and their surroundings were familiar and I found the characters deeply sympathetic.  Readers who are not Jewish but have had some experience with other Jewish authors, Singer or Ozick for example, will easily fall in with the stories.  I would say, however, that for most people, even for those of us with a good reading background in the language, a little Yiddish on the page goes a long way.  Luckily for those unfamiliar with the tongue, a glossary is provided at the back of the book.  

Leaving the story at the point where the troupe embarks for the New World, Ms. Barrack also leaves the troupe one short of a minyan but headed for the Golden Age of vaudeville in America – and vaudeville was the natural home for a multi-talented group like the Zingshpielern, with its specialty acts, olios, and central melodramas.  I would very much enjoy reading a continuation of her history, set perhaps in New York’s lower East Side in the 1890s, as her characters melt into the American pot.

Bend In The Road, by Jeanne Barrack.  Published by MLR Press, 2009.  280 pp.  $5.99 e-book; $14.99 paper; ISBN 978-1-60820-002-3