Shad­ows We Car­ry 

John F. Kennedy’s assassination is a defin­ing moment in his­to­ry, and, as Bron­ka Lubin­s­ki astute­ly com­ments, ​“Noth­ing will ever be the same again.” The novel  illus­trates the effects of the soci­etal changes and upheavals of the 1960s and 70s.

Judy and Aron Lubin­s­ki, both Holo­caust sur­vivors, and their fra­ter­nal twin daugh­ters, who were born in a DP camp, all car­ry deep fam­i­ly secrets from their past lives as they strug­gle to assim­i­late to Amer­i­can life in Queens, NY. 

Both sis­ters attend Queens Col­lege, but that is per­haps where their sim­i­lar­i­ties end.

The novel reach­es beyond just one fam­i­ly. The extend­ed Jew­ish fam­i­lies of the neigh­bor­hood, friends, cowork­ers, activists, Catholic priests, and ex-Nazis and Nazi hunters all have a role to play.

In this well-researched, char­ac­ter-dri­ven sto­ry, Ain exam­ines many themes and issues with insight and com­pas­sion. She folds top­ics such as fem­i­nism, anti­semitism, gay rights, abor­tion, and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Holo­caust sur­vivor con­cerns into the char­ac­ters’ lives. Because Ain thought­ful­ly inter­weaves numer­ous his­tor­i­cal events, sig­nif­i­cant nos­tal­gic details, and cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic ref­er­ences, the char­ac­ters’ sto­ries will res­onate deeply with those who expe­ri­enced the era.