Pete Hamill: Snow in August

In the year 1947 Michael Devlin, eleven years old and 100 percent American-Irish, is about to forge a most extraordinary bond. His new friend is Rabbi Judah Hirsch, a refugee from Prague. Here in Brooklyn, surrounded by tenements and the smell of hot dogs, Rabbi Hirsch enchants Michael with stories of ancient wisdom as Michael explains to him the equally wondrous world of baseball. Then the neighborhood intervenes — and only one thing can save them from the hate all around them. A miracle…

“Simply a wonderful story and well told.”

— Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe

“A beautiful tale of pain, evil, retribution, and hope.”

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Vivid… Hamill delivers… You can hear the sounds of kids playing stickball, taste the Communion wafers, and see Jackie Robinson stealing home.”

— Associated Press

“Once again, Pete Hamill shows us how marvelous a writer he is. This novel is a delight.”

— Peter Maas

“Lovely yet heartbreaking…. [A] moving story of a boy confronting morality…. In Michael Devlin, Hamill has created one of the most endearing characters in recent adult fiction…. SNOW IN AUGUST is a minor miracle in itself.”

— Hartford Courant

“Hamill is an effortless master at evoking a bygone era…. All [he] has to do is say ‘Shazam!’ and he brings to palpable life the streets of postwar Brooklyn and the prepubescent soul of a boy coming of age.”

— San Jose Mercury News

“Charming and affecting.”

— Miami Herald

“In this beautifully woven tale, Hamill captures perfectly the daily working-class world of postwar Brooklyn… Will thrill believers and make nonbelievers pause…. He examines with a cool head and a big heart the vulnerabilities and inevitable oneness of humankind.”

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Brings a fascinating time and place to very real life.”

— Orlando Sentinel

“Hamill is as readable as ever… the time-warp element and terrific descriptions will appeal to many.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“With a mastery of language and imagery that has made him the journalist-editor-novelist he is, Hamill meshes several disparate works seamlessly, in lush colors.”

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“A godsend…. Only the hard-hearted could fail to be moved by this old-fashioned story about friendship.”

— St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Hamill blends fiction and fantasy to produce a masterpiece… in a book that comes along about as often as there is snow in August…. All of the elements strike a chord without coming across as clichés…. He has written a great American novel.”

— Winston-Salem Journal

“Delightful… endearing… absorbing… Hamill has written a telling episode of faith, a faith which professes that major or minor miracles might readily occur along the streets of ancient Prague or modern Brooklyn’s East New York.”

— Midstream

“Re-creates the Brooklyn of days gone by lovingly…. Hamill, the journalist, puts just the right amount of realistic detail into the time and place and characters to make this story burst with life.”

— Kliatt

“A TENDER NOVEL…. When it comes to evoking the sights and sounds of postwar Brooklyn streets Pete Hamill has no peer…. When you finish that roller-coaster last chapter you’ll wonder if the shade of Isaac Bashevis Singer whispered in his ear.”

— Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

“STRONG AND SOULFUL — A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO A COMPELLING BODY OF WORK. Few are as good at evoking New York City’s life and heart as Pete Hamill.”

— Oscar Hijuelos, author of Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

NOVELS

A Killing for Christ

The Gift

Dirty Laundry

Flesh and Blood

The Deadly Piece

The Guns of Heaven

Loving Women

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

The Invisible City

Tokyo Sketches

NONFICTION

Irrational Ravings

A Drinking Life

Tools as Art

Piecework

Why Sinatra Matters

Diego Rivera

Once upon a cold and luminous Saturday morning, in an urban hamlet of tenements, factories, and trolley cars on the western slopes of the borough of Brooklyn, a boy named Michael Devlin woke in the dark.

He was eleven years and three months old in this final week of the year 1946, and because he had slept in this room for as long as he could remember, the darkness provoked neither mystery nor fear. He did not have to see the red wooden chair that stood against the windowsill; he knew it was there. He knew his winter clothes were hanging on a hook on the door and that his three good shirts and his clean underclothes were neatly stacked in the two drawers of the low green bureau. The Captain Marvel comic book he’d been reading before falling asleep was certain to be on the floor beside the narrow bed. And he knew that when he turned on the light he would pick up the comic book and stack it with the other Captain Marvels on the top shelf of the metal cabinet beside the door. Then he would rise in a flash, holding his breath to keep from shivering in his underwear, grab for clothes, and head for the warmth of the kitchen. That was what he did on every dark winter morning of his life.

But this morning was different.

Because of the light.

His room, on the top floor of the tenement at 378 Ellison Avenue, was at once dark and bright, with tiny pearls of silver glistening in the blue shadows. From the bed, Michael could see a radiant paleness beyond the black window shade and gashes of hard white light along its sides. He lay there under the covers, his eyes filled with the bright darkness. A holy light, he thought. The light of Fatima. Or the Garden of Eden. Or the magic places in storybooks. Suddenly, he was sure it was like the light in the Cave of the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man. That secret place in the comic book where the faceless man in the black suit first took Billy Batson to meet the ancient Egyptian wizard named Shazam. Yes: the newsboy must have seen a light like this. Down there, beyond the subway tunnel, in that long stone cave where the white-bearded wizard gave him the magic word that called down the lightning bolt. The lightning bolt that turned the boy into Captain Marvel, the world’s mightiest man.

Michael knew that the magic word was the same as the name of the wizard: Shazam! And he had learned from the comic book that the letters of the name stood for Solomon, Hercules, and Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. Ancient gods and heroes. Except for Solomon, who was a wise king from Bible days. Mighty symbols of strength, stamina, power, courage, and speed. They weren’t just names in a comic book either; Michael had looked them up in the encyclopedia. And their powers were all combined in Captain Marvel. On that night in the mysterious cave, the wizard named Shazam told Billy Batson he had been chosen to fight the forces of evil because he was pure of heart. And no matter how sinister his enemies were, no matter how monstrous their weapons, all he needed to fight them was to shout the magic word. Shazam!