Review by Mack Hassler
“Choose a Hawaiian Shirt, or dress….. Or just wear something bright, colorful or a plain Bright color…. Look Festive!! Smile!!! It brightens everyone’s mood.”
— A flyer posted by my Retirement Home“And with wandering steps and slow, [our first parents] through Eden made their Solitary way.” — John Milton, concluding lines of Book XII, 17th century Paradise Lost
I love receiving and owning the large, well-illustrated hardcover volumes published by Minnesota. They are memorable publications. What they usually send are uncorrected proofs, followed later by the handsome volumes. This novel, The Prohibited, by the best-selling author of the Nils Shapiro mystery series is more like a Memoir of Goldman’s family history, his early impressions of life in the Twin Cities of St Paul/ Minneapolis, a haven for bootleggers, gangsters, and bank robbers, but also the home to many ordinary folks navigating a remarkable new social order.
His title refers to the two major Amendments to the US Constitution. First was the Amendment, making it illegal to produce or sell alcoholic drinks. The second big change was the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement that had begun way back in the 19th century. The suffragist allegiance to and support of Prohibition is a major theme in Goldman’s narration of family life. The Kaner family, Goldman’s fictional name, has their liquor store shuttered, and so Red, Isaac, and Lewis are forced to find new livelihoods after the Eighteenth Amendment. One brother became a Rabbi since the 18th century, which excludes sacred wine. The complications include involvement with the mob and a loveless marriage. Goldman is a good storyteller. And I love this period in our history that leads up to the roaring Twenties and containing some of my favorite writers–F. Scott Fitzgerald, also from St Paul, and the Great Hemingway.
I have no idea what the illustrated hardcover with look like, but the cover art for my reading copy is a handsome Golden Age image of a “fallen “jazz Age” woman somehow inclosed within a whiskey bottle. What interests me most, however, is the tone or mood of the natrntion. And as I am now reaching the age where these effects in writing are so impmtant, I want to make this strange argument about how to survive our various human conditions. The great colorful film of Alice dancing along the Yellow Brick Road to the Land of oZ was released just at the time we needed it–at the end of the Thilties when we needed a Yellow Brick Road to dance along and to be “happy and gay and to laugh all our troubles away.”
Just by chance, the movie that was shown here in my old Folks home was “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factoty (1971). The old guy that the little boy got to lead him in his search for more candy, to dance down the Yellow Brick Road . In other words, Grandpa in the Willy Wonca movie is just like those us (myselfincluded) in my retirement home—feeble, can hardly walk, uses a cane–yet he leads the young boy in a dance, pretty agile, looking for candy. This is such a contrast to Milton’s great lines at the end of his poem— with wandering steps and slow we make our solitary way alone. I am curious which narrative tone will prevail once this book is finally released for sale.
I think either possibility is present in my reading copy of The Prohibited. Goldman is a good writer. The times he writes about are tough times. Mainly I like the contrast: Classy Alice dancing down the Yellow Brick Road-a candy road in the movie— or old Grandpa stumbling his way through all of histmy toward the Second Coming because he has fallen.
The Prohibited, by Matt Goldman (2026 University of Minnesota Press, 111 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55401 320 pages, hardcover, 28.95 (publication date September 29, 2026 [I read uncorrected proofs, not for sale.
