Author: Tana Reiff
Solomon Gold is a Russian immigrant in New York. He is a gifted and hardworking shoemaker. He and his wife keep to the old ways in everyday life and in their religion. They are proud of their heritage. As the story begins, their son Sidney is 14. He already knows that he doesn’t want to make shoes his whole life. He is an excellent student, and his father is proud of him, but Sol wants Sidney and Emma, his daughter, to follow the old ways.
Hopes and Dreams is a series of dramatic historical readers for beginners. The hopes and dreams of the characters in these stories are a reflection of the hopes and dreams of virtually every group of people who have ventured from their homes to a new place for a new life in America. Each story and its characters reflect a part of the history of the United States. Yet, at the same time, each story is different; the characters face challenges, defeats and victories in the fields and factories of Southern California, the gold fields of the West, the construction of the railroad in Utah, Chinatown in San Francisco, the Deep South and Southside Chicago, and New York’s Little Italy.
