Most of the people in [Why Should I Have All the Grief?] have come together to a small Ontario town near Galt to sit in mourning for the hero's uncle, a Jew from a Polish village who got out before the war and has now even a teenage grandson to help mourn for him. If you've ever sat shiva you'll know it's like a T-group….

Mrs. Gotlieb uses this ancient sensitivity session to work on her hero, Heinz Dorfman, one of the orphans who came to foster homes in Toronto after the war. (p. 36)

Whether or not non-Jews will be able to understand what has frozen Heinz is a puzzle. The one thing that it is not—and this makes the novel unique—is his experience in Auschwitz. What the novel is about is Jewish poverty and miserliness in a Polish village, about the blue velvet bag with...