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By Adrienne Lieberman, Class of 2010

The Lake on Fire by Rosellen Brown

I had to force myself to read slowly to fully savor this magnificent book. It’s the story of Jewish immigrants, a sister and brother, who escape a failing social experiment in Wisconsin. They make their way to Chicago on the eve of the Columbian World Exposition of 1893. The book teems with richly described delights that beckon a reader who also yearns to pursue the book’s central romances.

The romances drove this reader on, far into several nights. For example, the lover of happy endings will wonder whether and how an impoverished Jewish woman and her gentile Socialist socialite lover will find happiness in her world or his.

And how, if at all, will this same girl tame her beloved word-drunk trickster younger brother into a middle-class life after his book-stoked genius has made him the toast of World’s Fair?

Indeed, for six months in 1893, the World’s Fair, or White City, drew millions to its wonders. They are exquisitely detailed, including delicious cameos of several Chicago luminaries who help propel the story. These include social worker Jane Addams, reformer Florence Kelley, and Chicago’s Queen, Bertha Palmer, whose turreted mansion on the Lake Michigan shore had no doorknobs so that no one could enter who had not been summoned.

But after the Fair, the immigrants who constructed the spectacular confectionery White City out of Chicago’s squalor found themselves mired more desperately as Chicago and the rest of the country fell into an economic depression. That depression, and the accompanying economic desperation that fueled the workers’ rage, play a central role in the book’s title image of the lake on fire.

Pick up this book, and, if you like a provocative mix of the personal and political, eloquently described, you’ll be like me: a reader on fire, happily consumed for many rewarding hours.