When the Angels Left the Old Country

Plot Summary
Little Ash and Uriel the angel are on a mission to find a village girl who has not contacted her family since arriving in America. Immigration is not as easy as they expected after 200 years of studying together in a quiet village. Crooks and thieves try to swindle the two, but Ash's demonic cunning and Uriel's angelic power overcome the most corrupt gatekeepers to the American dream. Ash will find himself dragged into caring about human problems, and Uriel will begin to stray from his mission of servitude to follow Ash. They are joined by Rose, a clever girl who is mourning the loss of a friendship that would have accompanied her to the new world. Rose needs traveling companions, and the two entities need guidance on the Jewish communities in New York.

Critical Evaluation

    The natural flow of the dialogue makes it hard to believe that this is the author's debut novel. Only the Jewish terminology interrupted my reading as I had to often consult with the index to understand the context of different phrases. An improvement in future editions would be to have definitions as footnotes. Even without fantasy elements, the story would have been a captivating tale of immigrants coming to America, but I really loved the mythology surrounding the story. Lamb focuses on a Jewish tradition of angels and demons but assigns them only to Jewish communities and works in that other faiths have their own angels and demons working invisibly in the world of man.  

Having a Christian background, I have an image of angels and demons representing polar opposites of religion and being in conflict with each other. It seems that Judaism has a much more neutral view of their positions and their influence on mankind. In Christianity, demons tempt humans into causing pain and suffering, but in this narrative, demons appear only after humans have been wicked as if given an invitation to follow. Jewish demons dispense justice to wicked humans and angels urge them to do better making their goals similar but their methods tied to their nature. In a historical narrative it is almost a comfort to imagine the ills of the world were caused by supernatural demons and ghosts, not human monsters. It was also true to the time that a character would have feelings of same-sex attraction without having the language to realize that aspect of their identity until much later.