The Sidewalks Are Free

New York: Farrar, Straus and Company. Very Good in Fair dj. (c.1950). First Edition. Hardcover. [moderately shelfworn, bumped/cracked at lower rear corner, some white residue of some kind near bottom of rear cover; jacket heavily edgeworn, with a particularly nasty jagged tear affecting the upper half of the spine (which is also somewhat faded), also a bit of paper loss at top of spine]. Novel about a young immigrant, "Hershy Melov, born in the Ukraine, brought as an infant to America to grow up in northwest Chicago. The sidewalks were free and waiting to educate Hershy. He absorbed it all, from his schoolmates, from the milkman and the storekeepers, from his sister Rachel who fell in love with the bully of the neighborhood, from his Uncle Yussel who did not come back from the war but left them the doubtful blessing of his insurance money, from his father's troubles in the carpentering trade and from the family's ill-fated venture into the laundry business." The author himself, per the jacket blurb, was born in Russia, brought to America at the age of one, and grew up in Chicago; all mere coincidence, I'm sure. .