Levinson of Harvard

Vincent (Reception) explores the allure of Harvard for three generations of a Jewish family in this appealing tale. In 1969, Kansas high school student Mark Levinson gets accepted to the Ivy League school. Once he arrives that fall, however, he immediately feels out of his depth. Even worse, there’s no record of his grandfather Moishe having attended the university, despite Moishe’s many stories of his Harvard years. Using a letter and some other artifacts from back home, Mark attempts to uncover the real story with the help of an archivist. Amid his search, flashbacks to the first decade of the 20th century reveal the truth about Moishe. While living with his aunt and uncle in Boston, he yearns to attend Harvard despite warnings about harsh antisemitism from his cousin, a student there. At a summer resort job in 1904, Moishe begins a relationship with an Irish actress who provides accent and etiquette training to help him blend in with the upper crust, thus setting the stage for his plan to become an interloper at Harvard. Though Mark’s story doesn’t develop enough for the amount of pages devoted to it, the revelations about Moishe’s scheme are remarkable, and Vincent provides a bracing depiction of early-20th-century antisemitism. This meaty campus novel has a satisfying mystery at its core. (Self-published)