"Shore presents a remarkable sequence of incidents and domestic tableaux, in which the reader witnesses the desperate, comical, elusive, simple, or complicated kinds of happiness experienced by the citizens of her 1950s New Jersey neighborhood. Like an album of black-and-white photographs come alive, Shore's Jewish aunts and uncles, her parents, cousins, as well as the schoolteachers and shop owners she saw every day, are delivered to us with startling immediacy."--BOOK JACKET.