First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if, instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

The Rules:

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
• Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

“Walking on a New York City sidewalk on a frigid January morning, Esther Luna felt like a salmon swimming upstream through a river of humanity. She looked forward to the comfy warmth of the employee break room where the overhead fluorescent lights hummed like hungry mosquitoes and the smell of stale cookies had taken permanent residence in the cupboards. She even looked forward to a cup of Stan’s terrible coffee to thaw her out before her workday began as a Tenement Museum educator.”

This is a book that I just started reading today, and this line transported me to a whole different world that I know almost nothing about.

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

This is an recently published historical fiction with magic involved in the story.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It’s written by Mickey Dubrow.

The First Lines Friday book is:

The Magic Maker.

About the Book:

• Title: The Magic Maker
• Author: Mickey Dubrow
• Page Length: 283 pages
• Publication Date: January 14, 2025
• Publisher: Brother Mockingbird

Synopsis:

In 1917 on New York City’s Lower East Side, Baruch Rosenfeld invites a beggar to join his family for the Passover Seder. Baruch’s good deed backfires. He and his wife Rebekah and their children Nathan, Jacob, and Sadie are trapped in time. They don’t age, they can’t leave their three-room apartment, and the outside world believes they disappeared without a trace.

A hundred years later, the apartment building is now the Tenement Museum. Esther Luna, an educator for the museum, sees Sadie at the window. Esther goes to the apartment but finds it has been empty for decades. She hires Rabbi Meir Poppers, a kishef macher (magician), to solve the mystery of the girl at the window. 

Meir’s efforts to free the Rosenfelds are blocked by rivals, ancient spells, and his own self-doubt. When Meir finally reaches the trapped family, will his Jewish magic be enough to rescue the Rosenfelds from their eternal prison?

Links: Goodreads     

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