Keefer Street

by David Spaner

$24.95

• • October 2024
  • print ISBN: 9781553807209
  • 5″ x 8″ Trade paper, 320 pages
  • Fiction

Jake’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships.

“Reading David Spaner’s novel about Canadians who fought in the Spanish Civil War is an exciting way to learn about that bloody prelude to the Second World War. The book is recommended reading for anyone who was part of the left in the 1960s or wants to learn more about it. It should also become a textbook for high school history classes in need of a dose of truth about Canada’s role in a conflict that still puzzles and fascinates the world.” – Ron Verzuh, BC Review

“This critical moment in twentieth century fascist history should be required reading for any person troubled by our world right now. In hard boiled prose, David Spaner has rendered a heartbreaking, sometimes wry, and deeply moving novel about regular citizens who courageously chose to step up in defense of freedom and the consequences of that choice.” – Maureen Medved, author of Black Star

“This is the very best of Jewish-related Spanish Civil War novels that I’ve ever seen. Everything in the novel is handled beautifully. My favorite left-wing novel of the year!” – Paul Buhle, co-editor of !Brigadistas! an American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War

“Lively and penetrating.” – Tom Wayman, author of If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free? Literature and Social Change

“David Spaner knows the history he writes about. Keefer Street is a welcome addition to the field of Canadian fiction.” — Jonah Raskin, author Beat Blues: San Francisco, 1955

“For a good introduction to 1930s Vancouver, pick up a copy of David Spaner’s novel Keefer Street – BC BookWorld

With engaging wit and originality, David Spaner does for Vancouver what writers like Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth did for Montreal and Newark. Jake Feldman grows up on Keefer Street in the dynamic working-class immigrant neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver. While other cities have ethnic neighbourhoods, in the 1930s Strathcona was a “neighbourhood of ethnic neighbourhoods” including Jewish, Italian and Asian communities. This is the first novel to bring to life the vibrancy of Strathcona and its largely Jewish Keefer Street.

Jake’s left-wing, rabble-rousing street politics of his youth eventually lead him to leave Depression-era Vancouver to join the international volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. But his return home is unheralded and his idealism is worn down by the mundaneness of everyday life and family conflict.

Fifty years later, he recaptures the passion of his youth during a reunion of civil war volunteers in Spain. Keefer Street explores how to preserve your idealism in order to live a life of purpose.