The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

She's fine as 5-yr-old but becomes progressively more unlikable as the story goes on until she's a completely horrid. She does not do a Yiddish accent and does not pronounce the Yiddish words with a decent accent.

The 5-yr-old main character sound the same as when she's 75. Everyone sounds the same (except the stuttering husband-and for some reason she does an Italian accent). Honestly, I've never heard so many foreign words used so often in any English book EVER. And in this case she uses whole sentences instead of single words, though about 75% less than the Yiddish. My Italian is good enough, but if you don't speak Italian, you're lost. I was laughing but he didn't know any of the words other than 'oy.' She does this with Italian too. I happened to Google 'common Yiddish terms' to show to my boyfriend after listening to a Weird Al Yankovic song. Author assumes everyone understand the 100 or so Yiddish terms she uses over and over and over with no context. She has the syntax right for 'Jewish-speak' but not the cadence or inflection so it's like some clueless white guy trying to do 'gangsta-speak.' 3. It's usually not an issue when an author writes as/about another race, religion, ethnicity, or gender if they are skilled, but this author is not. Shiksa or Shikse: Derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman. Shiksa Writes and Narrates Book = Disaster And when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has spent her life building is at stake.

Conniving, profane, and irreverent, she is a supremely complex woman who prefers a good stiff drink to an ice cream cone. Yet Lillian Dunkle is nothing like the whimsical motherly persona she crafts for herself in the media.

Lillian's rise to fame and fortune spans seventy years and is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. Slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, 'The Ice Cream Queen' - doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality. She falls in love with a gorgeous, illiterate radical named Albert, and they set off across America in an ice cream truck. As she learns the secrets of his trade, she begins to shape her own destiny. Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, she manages to survive through cunning and inventiveness. Yet no sooner do they land on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan, than Malka is crippled and abandoned in the street. Bedazzled by tales of gold and movie stardom, she tricks them into buying tickets for America. In 1913, little Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman