Out of the Cellar

This retitled first revision of The Faithful and the Fallen, originally published in 2008, is a retrospect as told to a group of journalists by a United States Senator about to be nominated to run for President of the United States. Going back to the Great Depression, his story transcends four generations beginning with two unrelated Jewish immigrant families that settled in separate very tough ghettos in New York City; one on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the other in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. More than just the hardships and difficulties each family faced, the Senator’s story is about good vs. evil; a story of honor, responsibility, humility, deep faith, and evil beyond imagination. It’s a story of those in his family whose roots were predestined to secure the destiny of a future U.S. President. The main characters include three young homeless brothers surviving on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one of which is the future father of the Senator. Displaced from their home and family after the accidental death of their father, these three young boys survive the Great Depression eating out of trash cans and living unnoticed in the cellar of the very tenement building where their mother and sister live with a charitable neighbor. At only ten, the oldest brother’s primary mission is to keep his promise to honor the wishes of his father to care for the family should something befall him. As soldiers the three brothers become World War II heroes as two question their faith after seeing the carnage upon entering the Dachau Concentration Camp as the first liberators.