Adam Zignelik - a Jewish, white, Australian-born historian whose father was one of the dominant lawyers of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and whose career at Columbia University is quickly expiring as he fails to find or pursue any research topic

Lamont Williams - a Black probationary employee at Memorial Sloan-Kettering after serving a prison sentence, convicted mostly of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, who befriends a patient who enthralls and horrifies him with his memories of the ghetto and Auschwitz

Charles McCray - Adam’s friend and the first Black man to serve at the head of the Department of History at Columbia, whose father worked closely with Adam’s father in the 1950s and 1960s, pushing for civil rights for Black Americans

Michelle McCray - Lamont’s cousin and Charles’ wife, a social worker in New York

Henryk Mandelbrot - a cancer patient at Memorial Sloan Kettering who develops a friendship with Lamont and shares his story of resistance and survival during the Holocaust

Henry Border - a 1940s psychologist whose recorded works are discovered by Adam and open a world of historical exploration

This masterful multiple timeline novel weaves among the stories of these characters, plays with their relationships, and pulls at the heartstrings of its readers while educating them. Though I am often skeptical of historical fiction based on a true story, this enraptured me. I was fully immersed in every moment of the story, and I loved watching each character develop and discover more complicated elements of the world as they know it.

<spoiler> There is a mention early on about the repeal of Brown v. Board, but it doesn’t really factor much into the plot. I loved this book and was intrigued by this plot element when it was introduced, but ultimately, I don’t really understand its purpose, and it’s really my only qualm about the book. <spoiler/>

The Street Sweeper

Elliot Perlman