Intricately plotted and anecdote-packed, Jennifer Gilmore’s debut novel, “Golden Country,” details the complex history of two intertwined families: the Blooms and the Brodskys. Both are Jewish, both touched with genius and dishonesty, as they strive toward the twin goals of material success and social acceptance in America.–Allegra Goodman

Golden Country is a likable and surprising debut novel from a young writer who has turned to the generations of her grandparents and great-grandparents for fictional inspiration.

With a voice at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor, Gilmore warns: be careful what you wish for, the American Dream can sometimes be a nightmare.—Elissa Schappell

Gilmore’s chapters are jam-packed with historical facts about the mid-20^th century interaction of business, the arts and technology. But the novel’s heart beats with the pulse of human interactions and the missed connections of its well-drawn characters.—Liza Nelson

…her lively prose captures both the exuberance and disillusionment of the immigrant experience.

Even Goyim will be charmed by Gilmore’s ambitious debut novel—an interwoven epic about Jewish immigrant families that captures the shtimung of early 20^th-century New York. Think Ragtime without the wasps.

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Gilmore, publicity director at Harcourt, should consider leaping full time to the other side of the publishing table. She has written a thinking person’s family saga that showcases the immigrant experience amid the growth of this country’s largest city.

Jennifer Gilmore’s novel Golden Country is the sort of novel I’m always on the lookout for: a solid story well told, filled with appealing but imperfect people, and set in a place and time that is recognizable but unfamiliar enough to be interesting.

For a first novel, Jennifer Gilmore’s "Golden Country" (Scribner, 315 pp., $25) is a real winner. This is a relaxed and expansive unfurling of the stories of three Jewish immigrant families in New York during four decades.

“Her ability to suspend multiple generations of three families over fifty years in only three hundred pages is a testament to her skill and energy – Golden Country is a good read and a great start from a promising new writer. “

For a first-time novelist, tackling a book that traces the intertwined stories of several generations of Jewish immigrants is ambitious, to say the least. Wouldn’t it be simpler to ease in with a breezy novel about bad boyfriends or career troubles?

GOLDEN COUNTRY, by Jennifer Gilmore. (Harvest/ Harcourt, $14.) Two intertwined Jewish families over a period of some 40 years are the focus of Gilmore’s exploration of what it means to achieve the American dream. One of the characters in this first novel has mob ties and makes “dirty money”; another invents a cleaning product. “What is success? What are its costs? What role do invention, self- invention and dramatic representation play?” our reviewer, Allegra Goodman, asked. She praised Gilmore’s ability to present “the many choices the characters face” among the “temptations and dazzling distractions of America, the golden country” in this well-researched and intricately plotted novel.

"All our parents were wrong, thought Joseph; they never left their little street. They had no vision of the future. Everyone had been so scared. He too had been scared, growing up scrawny and taught to fight not with his fists but with words, words in a neighborhood where language meant nothing."

Gilmore, whose day job is serving as director of publicity at Harcourt, definitely knows what she is doing, admirably exploring the lives of her characters and the choices they make in pursuit of the ever-elusive American dream.

When Jews at the turn of the last century wistfully spoke of the goldene medina (golden country), they meant just one place: America. The phrase evoked images of a land of "freedom, justice, opportunity — and protection against pogroms," wrote Leo Rosten in his 1968 classic, "The Joys of Yiddish." But when "spoken in irony or sarcasm," he added, the goldene medina also came to signify "a miraculous hope that ends in disappointment."

Which makes the title of Jennifer Gilmore’s debut novel, "Golden Country" (Scribner, 2006), especially apt. In her intricately plotted story, Gilmore deftly weaves fact into fiction as she traces the fortunes of three intertwined families of Jewish immigrants in early 20th century New York. The result is a compelling portrait of hopes, both realized and dashed, that explores questions of identity, self-invention, women’s roles and the definition of success.

This is an excellent book about the Jewish immigrant experience in America.
Armchair Interviews says: This historical fiction is a wonderful, can’t-put-down read!