The best new Jewish (and other!) books of all genres to read this summer.
By Emily Burack
Alma
May 27, 2021
“The Day the Klan Came to Town” is a story of the Second Klan, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after the 1915 film “Birth of the Nation.” Set in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, in 1923, it was a planned show of force to march through a town full of Catholics, mainly Italian immigrants, and Jews. This book is a fictionalized retelling of the very real riot, focusing on one young man, a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. Bill Campell, a Black sci-fi and Afrofuturism writer, expertly makes a pivot here to historical fiction, and the pairing with Iranian American artist Bizhan Khodabandeh makes the story really come to life. As Damian Duffy writes in his blurb: “So often, in times of unrest, we raise our heads up from the crowds of protesters and clouds of tear gas and wonder, ‘How did we get here?’ Fortunately, Bill Campbell and Bizhan Khodabandeh are here to remind you of the history that so informs our present.” A timely antifascist and antiracist story.
Read if you’re into: graphic novels, historical fiction. Get it here.
