Your Comrade, Avreml Broide

Written in 1944 by Ben Gold, the president of the Communist Furriers Union, this proletarian, coming-of-age novel traces the family origin, immigration, and radicalization of an everyman named Avreml Broide. Mirroring Gold's life, Avreml's story begins entangled in a complex intergenerational social and criminal community in Bessarabia just after the turn of the twentieth century. After immigrating to New York City as a young adult, he dedicates himself entirely to his union and the fight against fascism, devoting himself to strikes, dissidence, and eventually enlisting in the Spanish Civil War, often to the detriment of his personal life and relationships. With bold and stimulating illustrations by leftist Jewish cartoonist William Gropper, Annie Sommer Kaufman's translation brings Gold's emotionally rich narrative forward to reveal some of the most dramatic conflicts in America's suppressed Communist history.