Houses of Detention

• Author: Jean Ende
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: April 1, 2025
• Publisher: Apprentice House

Thank you to Ari @ Mindbuck Media for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So what’s a nice girl from a good family doing in a place like the Bronx House of Detention? 

Like many immigrants who flee persecution, when the Rosens escaped the Nazis they thought life in America would be perfect. And for a while it was. Men developed successful businesses, a mink stole hung in every hall closet, overly abundant high-carb food graced al tables and grandma preserved tradition while finishing her weekly bottle of whiskey.

But then cracks appeared—a teenager pushed boundaries so far that the police have become part of the family story, an in-law loudly mourned the loss of status he had in their village and a woman with stricter beliefs married into the family causing catastrophic rifts.

Despite the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust there’s frequent humor. People who eat frozen, pre-packaged bagels are condemned, Cossacks who once incinerated towns are now Bar Mitzvah waiters carrying flaming cherries jubilee, the chippie dating the synagogue president carries a bejeweled poodle-shaped purse that barks in French and no one understands how WASPs can wear leather loafers without socks.

This book has enough twists, turns, and turmoil to make anyone, immigrant or Mayflower descendent, cry, Oy Vey!

When I first received a message asking if I’d be interested in reading this book, the summary made it sound like the story would relay the tale of a family that seemed an awful lot like my own, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this read and get started. I tried as hard as i could to love this story, but I think I may have had my expectations too high. I do understand that my own family dynamics are unique, just like every other family out there. 

I’ve been waiting for days to write this, trying to coherently organize my thoughts after finishing this book, and they still aren’t quite coming together. These are the kind of reviews where I just have to write it out and sort my thoughts that way. So I apologize in advance if this comes across as scattered or disorganized. I was struck by the parallels between the Rosen family and my own—at least initially. A woman and her three children, two boys and a girl, escape Nazi persecution by coming to America, where the men each marry women from assimilated Jewish-American families. In my family’s case, my paternal grandparents and their two sons survived the Holocaust in Poland, dodging persecution from both Nazis and deeply antisemitic Polish people. They eventually made their way to connect with family in America, and my father and my uncle married Jewish-American women. In our household, we kept kosher and my father would ensure that we all understood the meaning of the holiday we were celebrating, understood our traditions, and knew how they connected back to Jewish practices for thousands of years, to ensure that we knew what to do and carried on the traditions of our small and scattered tribe.

Part of the fun yet also part of the challenge of navigating family relationships, especially in books, is to watch how different family members think, behave, and communicate so differently. I always like to say that every family tree has a leaf that might be better trimmed, except that has only applied to very distant and seriously strange ‘leaves.’ Me personally, I think families in general tend to contain at least one or two members that might not be as likable, but overall most family members are genuinely nice, good people.

If this book were my first introduction to post-war Jewish life in America, or to Jewish people at all, I would be horrified. It was hard to find a likable character, and came up with just Sarah and Marvin, mainly because they were children and didn’t have a lot of depth to them. And although Rebecca eventually won me over with how much she changed and matured over the years, I struggled to find any adult characters that I felt empathetic towards. They were all disagreeable in different ways, and I had a hard time feeling much of anything towards any of the characters aside from Bubbe Golda, Rebecca, and Marvin. Of these three, only Rebecca really had much depth to her character, while Bubbe Golda’s depth all came from her backstory of devastating losses in the Holocaust, and Marvin’s whole personality felt unformed throughout the story, and the sadness was over the potential that he missed out on.

The Rosen siblings and their respective spouses live on the same street, along with Bubbe Golda, and the brothers found a successful business. They include their brother-in-law as part of their business, in a promise they make to their sister, who dies young, of cancer, very early in the book (this isn’t a spoiler, I promise). So they employ Harvey, but don’t take him on as a partner because he isn’t very good at his job. The Rosen wives are close friends and the family all gets along, so it isn’t a problem for Helen and Rachel to split the childcare for Harvey’s children—Marvin is close in age to his male cousins from one uncle, while Rebecca is only a little older than her female cousin from the other uncle, and they just kind of grow up communally. One of the women also helps provide whatever Bubbe Golde needs on a weekly basis.

But unlike Jews that grew up and lived in shtetls before the Holocaust, American Jews quickly learned that successful life in America required at least some degree of assimilation. My parents came to their own compromises on the expectations put on us to both assimilate (so people don’t know we’re Jews and can’t use it to persecute us) and also to continue to adhere to our ancient beliefs and customs. Any child of a Holocaust survivor grew up with their parent screaming and incoherent during a nightmare, an extremely overblown startle response, and a strange relationship with food. In my house, that last one was that we always had to have a supply of bread in the freezer. My grandfather was a baker, and during the war, my father promised himself that if they lived through this, he would never go hungry for bread again.

There was so, so much potential in this book to provide positive and accurate Jewish representation, and it missed the mark every single time. Instead of having realistic characters with nuance and depth, we are presented with one-dimensional stereotypes of characters. Harvey is overly entitled because of his yeshiva learning in the old country, but he has a blinding lack of self-awareness and a complete lack of understanding of the basics of socialization and parenting. Harvey is constantly pushed into the role of family charity case, yet never experiences any humility, which is something that would have saved him a lot of heartache.The Rosen men are strictly there to earn money and let their wives handle every other aspect of life for them. Rachel and Helen are overbearing and excessively involved yet somehow manage to get things done without ever getting overwhelmed. It almost felt like the author leaned heavily on harmful and inaccurate stereotypes rather than developing a well-rounded personality and ties to the backstory that underlies every Jewish family, no matter where they live. 

I wanted to badly to love this book, but as I read, I found myself dragging my feet on picking this up. It took me over a month to read this, and it wasn’t until I had finished the book and found not a single representation that felt the least bit accurate. This reminded me of The Family Morfawitz, in that I didn’t see anything other than a collection of stereotypes and harmful depictions of Jewish people. The growth of the single character with an actual personality was what motivated an extra star, but I was so underwhelmed by this book. I was hoping to see somewhat of what we grew up with in the NY boroughs, and instead was left with more than a vague distaste for the stereotypical and uncreative characters, and slow, meandering storyline. 

Are all Jews good people? Nope. You can swap that for any other group that has been marginalized, and say the same thing. There are good people and bad people, no matter who they are, where they come from, what religion they practice, their sexuality, gender identity, Unfortunately, when populating a family full of people who are all stereotypical and/or unlikable, it can be harmful to a community by reinforcing existing stereotypes. While I don’t think this book was written with harmful intent, I was so disappointed to be unable to find any positive representation. And when things aren’t bad enough, throw in a mean, entitled, nasty, vindictive, and judgmental woman, and then make her an Orthodox Jew who rubs everyone the wrong way. That’s Batya, the woman Harvey chooses to remarry. Or should I say, just agrees to it, because she’s yet another overbearing Jewish woman. The only thing that made Batya stand out from Helen and Rachel, who are basically interchangeable except one has boys and the other has girls, is that Batya had no idea how to interact with a family in any way, and her overblown sense of entitlement mirrors Harvey’s so that both of them are trapped in a cycle of resentment fueled by focusing on what they should have had and judging those around them that is inescapable. 

Overall, I was ready and willing to love this book on the merit of the summary, but it never really came through in the writing. I don’t think it is a good representation of Jewish society in America, especially amongst the generation who survived the Holocaust, or even through the grandchildren of survivors. It’s hard to find a Jewish person who can’t shake their family tree and find an ancestor who was killed or persecuted for being Jewish, in most cases violently. And I’m willing to bet it wasn’t that long ago. So naturally, I was highly disappointed by my first finished Jewish read of Jewish Heritage Month. The pacing was inconsistent, with things happening very slowly for the majority of the book, then time suddenly flying by. I struggled with finishing this one, but was hoping it would get better by the end. While it did, it was only a little bit, and not nearly enough to make up for the excessively flat characters and slow-moving plot. Normally, here is where I’d make suggestions as to who might like this, and unless you already have a good, nuanced, and balanced understanding of both Jewish history and Jewish-American culture and society, I wouldn’t recommend this one. And if you do have a good understanding of Jewish life? You aren’t going to want to read this one.

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