Book Review
Flying Out of Brooklyn By BEVERLY MAGID
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
The story begins when Rose Martin, not a person who complained or talked much, quietly walked off the edge of the fireescape of her fifth-floor apartment. Headlines from The Brooklyn Eagle lead each chapter of this book, set in Brooklyn in 1943. They help to give the reader the flavor of the time.

The story is really about Judith Weissman, a neighbor of Rose Martin, who worries that she might have been able to help Rose, were she not so absorbed in her own discontent. Judith is a romantic, feeling confinedby her job in an insurance officeand in her marriage to Marvin. Marvin had attracted her with his strength, his kindness, and his "deep, dark eyes," but now she is bored and restless. She doesn't get along with Marvin's mother; Yetta Weissman did not want Marvin to marry her and spends most of their limited time together asking her to hurry up and produce grandchildren and criticizing everything about Judith.

Marvin and his father are butchers, honorable men who resist the attraction of the black market in a time of meat rationing. Sammy, Judith's brother, on the other hand, is far from honorable. He becomes increasingly involved in gambling as the plot moves on.

The plot moves on for Judith, too, when she meets at the U.S.O. a local hero whom she had known in high school. Bobby has been to war and has come home damaged physically as well as psychologically. He won't return to the old neighborhood to see people, but he cannot resist Judith's attempts to help him, attempts that are soon out of control.

Meanwhile, Marvin suffers because he has been turned down by the military. He feels guilty as other men are called up, and hopes that somehow his status will change. Judith would also like to help the war effort and is encouraged by an old friend who now works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Author Beverly Magid grew up on the East Coast, and has been a journalist and publicist in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. She is able to make us care about her characters, even the self-centered Sammy. The reader is often irritated with Judith, also self-absorbed. However, it takes a skillful writer to create characters who are realistic enough to irritate but human enough to deserve our sympathy.

Because the characterization is strong, the reader can glide over the predictable aspects of the plot and be caught up in the picture of the "home front" in World War II.

Flying Out of Brooklyn is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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