The Angel Max

Peter Glassgold’s novel The Angel Max is written in the narrative tradition of the immigrant memoir. It tells the story of Max Kraft. Born in 1866 in tsarist Russia, in what is now Lithuania, he is an orphan, raised by educated and enlightened Jews. As a boy, he becomes obsessed with English and the brave New World across the ocean. He comes to America, to New York, and stays with wealthy relatives. A sound marriage and equally sound business ventures make the American dream immediately come true. But there is the other side of the family—revolutionary stepsisters, a crazed, violent half-brother, an anarchist cousin by marriage—none other than "Red Emma" Goldman herself. They are in and out of his life, and Max becomes an "angel" for the anarchist cause, both out of sympathy as well as to keep them at a day-to-day distance. This ambiguity is rendered in a richly inventive novel filled with tragedy and high drama, infused with Chekhovian empathy and humor, and heady with ideas.

Harcourt Brace. 1998