Reviewed by Donald H. Harrison

San Diego (special) -- When my daughter Sandi called to tell me that husband Shahar was taking her to the hospital to have a baby, I grabbed a volume from the stack of books to be reviewed, figuring I'd need something to keep my mind occupied in the waiting room until my grandson, Shor Martin Masori, would be born. 

I know Harriet Rochlin as a historian whose Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West was an excellent overview of the experiences and contributions of Jews to post-Gold Rush California and neighboring states. But here I found her in another incarnation as a novelist. Authors have to stick to the facts when they're writing histories, but an historian who writes a novel can mix both facts and imagination.

Rochlin's imagination, I found, can be quite vivid. Eerily enough, her novel, On Her Way Home, begins with a young Jewish woman having a baby in a manner that was anything but reassuring for this first-time grandpa-to be: "She screamed until she was as hoarse as a mule driver and thrashed her arms and legs as though she were being murdered," was the way Rochlin described the labor of her main character, Frieda Levie Goldson. I hoped my daughter wasn't going through the same kind of experience.

After awhile I picked the book back up again, to learn that grievous news had caused Frieda to all but ignore her new baby as well as her other children. The people with whom her little sister, Ida Levie, had gone on an expedition in the Arizona Territory had been brutally murdered by a hired hand. Ida apparently had been abducted by the murderer.

The book wended its way through the search for Ida to the surprising condition in which Ida was found, to -- --

My wife Nancy, who had been in the delivery room with Sandi and Shahar came running down the hall and practically launched herself into my arms: "You're a Grandpa!" she exulted.

Well, so much for the imaginary world of Frieda and Ida. I hurried to the real world of Shor, to congratulate my daughter, and to thank her friend Amy Atava who also had helped her through the April 20 delivery under the guidance of a nurse and midwife team at Kaiser Permanente Hospital.

Sandi was a little embarrassed by the last few moments of pushing. She said that she had screamed quite loudly. But I knew better, having been reading in the waiting room. Her voice didn't sound anything like a mule driver's to me. 

"Did you hear me all the way down in the waiting area?" she asked self consciously. "No," I replied, "honestly I didn't hear you at all." She seemed relieved. Nancy looked dubious. But it was true. I guess I was so absorbed by the book, I heard nothing.

New mothers and babies have a way of needing sleep, but even hours later this grandpa was far too excited to just snooze after such a momentous occasion. So I turned back to the tale of Frieda and Ida, and found that the sheriff who had arrested the murderer was also suspicious of Ida--who exhibited what we modern-day readers might call "the Patti Hearst Syndrome"; that is, a hostage bonding with a captor.

The book soon developed into a courtroom drama, and I know better than to tell you how it turned out, because that would ruin all the fun for you. But I can tell you this: I stayed hooked until the plot reached its denouement.

Furthermore, I'll always appreciate Rochlin's yarn for having made my daughter's labor go by more quickly -- well, for me, that is.