New York Cityยยs Lower East Side on the eve of WWI. Abraham Cahan, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, receives a letter addressed to his ยยBintel Brifยย column from a twenty-three-year-old girl who confesses to living in sin with her uncle and seeks his advice. The girlยยs description of her plight inflames Cahanยยs imagination; the enclosed photograph, a young woman in a white cotton shift gazing ...Full description
New York Cityยยs Lower East Side on the eve of WWI. Abraham Cahan, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, receives a letter addressed to his ยยBintel Brifยย column from a twenty-three-year-old girl who confesses to living in sin with her uncle and seeks his advice. The girlยยs description of her plight inflames Cahanยยs imagination; the enclosed photograph, a young woman in a white cotton shift gazing languidly up at the camera from her bed, overwhelms him with desire. ยยPeering at the photograph, wondering if her slackened, unprotected presentation of herself was the aftermath of a feverish embrace, Cahan felt a ghostly invisible presence possess him, settling into the emptiness in his soul.ยย Thus begins the drama of a righteous manยยs struggle to free himself from an obsession that threatens to destroy him and mortally wound his family. Desperate to fathom the mystery of her power, Cahan explores the girlยยs past only to discover that her st