My suburban shtetl

""Grandpa's been arrested for hitting a Nazi with a salami!" So begins Robert Rand's engaging novel of growing up in Skokie, Illinois, home to one of America's largest communities of Jewish Holocaust survivors and to Rand's alter ego, Bobby Bakalchuk. In 1977 Skokie made news as Nazis elected to march down its main street. This enraged citizens, ignited a storm over the First Amendment, and drove Grandpa Bakalchuk to the front armed with an all-beef 100% kosher projectile.". "Under Bobby's keen eye, the sixties and seventies are resurrected via the characters and curiosities that shape his young life: from American Nazi Frank Collin to wandering Orthodox prophet Reb Rappoport, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to a prayer shawl from Auschwitz pulled dripping from the lagoon, from a rain of Ping-Pong balls to the innocent incursion of lone black workman Leroy Dalcourt.". "This utterly American story describes an immigrant community grappling with the same cultural issues and moral choices faced by previous and subsequent newcomers. Perceived as different, Skokie's Jews and their offspring struggle to comprehend - and fit into - the political, racial, and cultural stew that is the United States."--BOOK JACKET.