By Aden Polydoros

Published in 2021, Aden Polydoros notes in the afterward, “I wanted to write a book where the Jewish characters weren’t just passive victims, but where they fought back and rose above the people who wished to do them harm.” The political climate today is a little trickier, but it does feel like both Hamas and IDF are doing their best to erase the beauty of Jewish culture each in their own way. Polydoros, however, does a powerful job of capturing the complexity of Jewish immigrant experience, in this case in Chicago in the late 1800s.

The City Beautiful packs in a lot, actually – it is a YA historical fantasy murder mystery, tying together the historical realism of immigrant life in the Chicago tenements with Jewish folklore in an enthralling story. Years after a traumatic Atlantic passage and the death of his father, Alter Rosen is focused on staying out of trouble and earning enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America. The disappearance of young men in his neighborhood is common enough that he doesn’t pay it much heed until his roommate and unrequited crush is found drowned. When preparing the tahara, the ritual purification ceremony for dead, he is taken over by the other boy’s dybbuk, or vengeful spirit, and driven to uncover the murder in order to free himself and lay the spirit to rest.

He is assisted by friends and neighbors who all represent varied facets of Jewish and immigrant experiences, occasionally in conflict with each other. The novel captures how messy and uncontained life is, and by contrast how false and damaging stereotypes and propaganda are, even if they seem more easily digestible on the surface. At a more basic level, it is also an absolutely thrilling mystery and ghost story, and a sweet YA-appropriate romance.