“It’s a strange time to be a Jew.”

So goes the thesis of this alternative-history-crime-noir-chess-thriller from the very beginning. World War II has come and gone—just like in real life—except for one small difference: the 1940 Slattery report (you know, the one that proposed settling Europe’s Jews in Alaska as a temporary refuge from Nazi persectution and genocide) was actually implemented and Sitka, Alaska is a burgeoning Gotham, full of life, love, and gritty-as-shit gumshoes.

Michael Chabon is, hands down, one of my favorite modern authors. He’s got it all: an amazing plot-thread imagination, a BITING ear for dialogue and metaphor, and the technical chops to pull it all together. Surely all you comic geeks have read the superb ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay’ and maybe even a little ‘Wonder Boys’ or ‘The Final Solution’ to boot…this book—The Yiddish Policemen’s Union—meets (and sometimes surpasses, IMO) the gauntlet that those fine tomes throw down.

As can be evidenced by my past recommendations, I’m a sucker for the whole ‘Alternative-’ tag…no matter what genre I’m reading. Alternative-History, Alternative-Sci Fi, Alternative Fantasy…you name it. This book doesn’t disappoint on that front: one of Chabon’s main strengths is his ability to take the totally and completely foreign and strange and set it up in such a way that you read a hundred pages without getting even a HINT of the unfamiliary. His researcher’s bone is connected to the credibility bone, and all of a sudden the idea of a multi-million-person urban settlement sprawling out into the Alaskan wastes isn’t just plausible, it’s a downright reality.

Thematically, too, the author stays true to his hallmarks: Throughout all of the beautiful setting, intricate plot-twists (there are many), and hard-core dialogue, Chabon wrestles with the same points of Jewish identity crisis and loss of culture and homeland that turn up in Kavalier and Klay.

You should give this book a chance…it’s well worth it. Chabon is an immaculate author, and for me, was kind of a gateway-drug to the likes of modern ‘Literature’. They’ll—for sure—be teaching him to our kids.