Promise

Promise

by Chaim Potok
Publisher: Anchor Books
Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Current Retail Price: $14.95
Used Price: $8.00 (1 in stock) Condition Policy

For young Reuven Malter, it is a time of testing. With his teachers, he struggles for recognition of his boldly radical methods of scholarship. With his old friend Danny Saunders—who himself had abandoned his place in a rabbinical dynasty for the uncertain life of a healer—he battles to save a sensitive boy imprisoned by genius and rage.

Painfully and, at last, triumphantly, Reuven grows into a guardian of the ancient, sacred promise to his people, while earning his hard-fought right to make his own beginning.

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  Beautiful and Profound.
Miss Pickwickian of Oregon, 3/23/2011
“The Promise” is the sequel to Potok’s famous book, “The Chosen,” but one that could stand on its own.

Danny and Reuven are both going through college and graduate school. The book focuses on controversies within their community, and the life of a mentally ill young man that involves both students. It also brings in the lives of Jews who traveled to America after being liberated at the end of World War II.

Compared to The Chosen, I think Potok's writing style was greatly improved and much more polished, however, some books just have a soul to them in a way an author can never fully repeat. To me, “The Chosen” is “immortal” and “The Promise” is a merely a great book that should be read.

Potok is a gifted story teller who doesn’t hesitate to weave in complicated themes that make his stories vividly lifelike. No character is fully likeable and even the most annoying are fully loveable. His last pages, however quiet, are more satisfying than nearly any other author I’ve read.