The Dark Lady from Belorusse Author:Jerome Charyn In this beautiful memoir of a Bronx upbringing, Jerome Charyn evokes with extraordinary accuracy an unusual childhood during World War II.Charyn successfully peels back the years of his life to recapture the innate curiosity, sense of wonder, and uncommon reasoning that all young children possess. And he lovingly reproduces one of the most influ... more »ential figures of his youth -- his mother, the Dark Lady of Belorusse.
The routine betrayals of borough politics and the dirty deals of black marketeers are brilliantly captured in Jerome Charyn's memoir of his early childhood in the Bronx of World War II. The Dark Lady from Belorusse is essentially a loving portrait of Charyn's mother, a brave and beautiful Jew from White Russia, who at 32 becomes a dealer in a weekly poker game where the principal players are the Irish politicians who run the Bronx in the 1940s.... This is a terrific little book. -- The New York Times Book Review, John Irving