"Young Harry serves as a wide-eyed guide to a world since dismantled....
True to a child's experience, it is the details of domestic life that illuminate the tale...."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A groundbreaking story of family secrets and forbidden love told in plain, beautiful prose
through the eyes of a young Jewish boy...the chapters are tense with danger and with
tenderness."--Booklist (starred review)

This enchanting true story, written when the author was ninety-three, is a moving tale of
working-class life, social divide, and forbidden love on the eve of the first World War.

The narrow street on which Harry grew up appeared identical to countless other
working-class English neighborhoods--except for the invisible wall that ran down
the center of the street, dividing the Jewish families on one side from the Christians
on the other. The geographical distance may have been yards, but socially, it was
miles. Families on either side did not speak or meet. But when Harry's older sister
fell for the boy across the street, Harry became a go-between for the lovers, crossing
the great divide to hide their secret. When the truth inevitably came out, Harry had to
decide, at a very young age, what he believed was morally right.