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Grand River and Joy
Halloween morning 1966, Harry Levine arrives at his wholesale shoe warehouse to find an ethnic slur soaped on the front window. As he scavenges around the sprawling warehouse basement, looking for the supplies he needs to clean the window, he makes more unsettling a stash of Black Power literature; marijuana; a new phone line running off his own; and a makeshift living room, arranged by Alvin, the teenaged tenant who lives with his father, Curtis, above the warehouse. Accustomed to sloughing off fears about Detroit's troubled inner-city neighborhood, Harry dismisses the soaped window as a Halloween prank and gradually dismantles “Alvin's lounge” in a silent conversation with the teenaged tenant. Still, these events and discoveries draw him more deeply into the frustrations and fissures permeating his city in the months leading up to the Detroit riots.
Grand River and Joy, named after a landmark intersection in Detroit, follows Harry through the intersections of his life and the history of his city. It's a work of fiction set in a world that is anything but fictional, a novel about the intersections between races, classes and religions exploding in the long, hot summers of Detroit in the 1960s. Grand River and Joy is a powerful and moving exploration of one of the most difficult chapters of Michigan history.
Susan Messer's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Glimmer Train Stories, North American Review, and Colorado Review. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in prose, an Illinois Arts Council literary award for creative nonfiction, and a prize in the Jewish Cultural Writing Competition of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture.
Cover photograph copyright © Bill Rauhauser and Rauhauser Photographic Trust
Grand River and Joy, named after a landmark intersection in Detroit, follows Harry through the intersections of his life and the history of his city. It's a work of fiction set in a world that is anything but fictional, a novel about the intersections between races, classes and religions exploding in the long, hot summers of Detroit in the 1960s. Grand River and Joy is a powerful and moving exploration of one of the most difficult chapters of Michigan history.
Susan Messer's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Glimmer Train Stories, North American Review, and Colorado Review. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in prose, an Illinois Arts Council literary award for creative nonfiction, and a prize in the Jewish Cultural Writing Competition of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture.
Cover photograph copyright © Bill Rauhauser and Rauhauser Photographic Trust
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 25, 2023
In order to put my review in context, you should know what kind of reader I am. I do not like most of today's hyped books. I do not enjoy how the current bestsellers keep readers hooked by focusing on extraordinary events and dramatic relationships. This is kind of like turning episodes of The Oprah Show into fiction. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I do like to read a story about extraordinary events, but then it needs to be told well. I love books that emphasize nuanced character explorations to fast-paced narratives that are all about plot twists.
This is why I loved "Grand River and Joy". I saw that some reviewers describe it as slow and boring. I think that's mainly because the book is different from those quick-paced twist-based narratives that many readers are looking for. To each their own, of course. I found Susan Messer's book to be beautifully written, smart, and kind. Each paragraph and even each sentence has so much depth that I often had to put the book aside in order to savor it. Even secondary characters who appear on just a page are painted in a way that helped me see them as real people with complex pasts, which made me want to learn more about them.
All the relationships and even minor interactions in "Grand River and Joy" are portrayed carefully and with great attention to detail. Susan Messer chose words that describe people in a way that I could see them and feel with them. Several times throughout the book I had tears in my eyes as I was explaining a range of emotions with the characters.
I believe that every work of art helps you learn a combination of two things: you learn something about its creator and something about the real world (one might also learn a thing or two about oneself). I personally love works of art that help me learn something new about the world, and not just something about the author (e.g., their perceptions of different people, the way they see certain people, etc.). Susan Messer’s novel is special to me because it is filled with details about events of the era, well-researched or based on personal experience. I know that the author spent many hours working with Detroit archives in order to reconstruct historic events that serve as a background for the story. What's even more important is that these well-researched details are not dry but filled with life and feeling.
Last but not least, I loved this book because I sensed a lot of empathy in it (and empathy is something I value a lot in my life and work). My interpretation of the book is that it emphasized the role of kindness as a bridge between individuals and their communities. The book's protagonist is a kind person who strives to see other people as individuals and not simply as stereotypes. Harry is not a one-dimensional character, because you can see how he is struggling with his own flaws and biases. But his kindness shines through. This combination is what makes this character relatable in a very special way.
This is why I loved "Grand River and Joy". I saw that some reviewers describe it as slow and boring. I think that's mainly because the book is different from those quick-paced twist-based narratives that many readers are looking for. To each their own, of course. I found Susan Messer's book to be beautifully written, smart, and kind. Each paragraph and even each sentence has so much depth that I often had to put the book aside in order to savor it. Even secondary characters who appear on just a page are painted in a way that helped me see them as real people with complex pasts, which made me want to learn more about them.
All the relationships and even minor interactions in "Grand River and Joy" are portrayed carefully and with great attention to detail. Susan Messer chose words that describe people in a way that I could see them and feel with them. Several times throughout the book I had tears in my eyes as I was explaining a range of emotions with the characters.
I believe that every work of art helps you learn a combination of two things: you learn something about its creator and something about the real world (one might also learn a thing or two about oneself). I personally love works of art that help me learn something new about the world, and not just something about the author (e.g., their perceptions of different people, the way they see certain people, etc.). Susan Messer’s novel is special to me because it is filled with details about events of the era, well-researched or based on personal experience. I know that the author spent many hours working with Detroit archives in order to reconstruct historic events that serve as a background for the story. What's even more important is that these well-researched details are not dry but filled with life and feeling.
Last but not least, I loved this book because I sensed a lot of empathy in it (and empathy is something I value a lot in my life and work). My interpretation of the book is that it emphasized the role of kindness as a bridge between individuals and their communities. The book's protagonist is a kind person who strives to see other people as individuals and not simply as stereotypes. Harry is not a one-dimensional character, because you can see how he is struggling with his own flaws and biases. But his kindness shines through. This combination is what makes this character relatable in a very special way.
September 28, 2018
A calm familial timescape beginning in 1966 centered in the close neighborhood that bordered 12th and Clairmount. We meet Harry and Ilo, his sister, on their way to the shoe store in the building that Harry inherited from his father. Curtis and his son Alvin live upstairs. Curtis works for Harry, when needed. Alvin is a young black man experimenting with activism, music and recreational enhancements. Harry and Ruth have three daughters. The community is in transition: many are moving to the suburbs, businesses are closing, Detroit is unsteady. Neighbors talk about this unease on the sidewalk in front of their houses. Why stay? Why leave? It took me a long time to read this book - a friend loaned it after their book club had read it. The novel feels like a book club selection. There is considerable opportunity for questions and discussion.
April 22, 2015
Bought this book about a notable Detroit intersection (writes Messer: “Joy Road—now there was a misnomer”) after reading an excellent Messer story last summer in Glimmer Train.
This novel covers the months leading up to Detroit’s horrific 1967 summer and its aftermath. The riot/rebellion the city and its residents--and vicariously, the entire country--experienced in July 1967 lasted five days, 43 people died, more than a thousand were injured, and the associated fires destroyed thousands of buildings. The city has never recovered.
Messer’s story details the intersection of lives, as well—black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, parents and children. In the unsettled time leading up to the July events, Harry Levine—the Jewish owner of a wholesale shoe store founded by his father—and his family members and neighbors debate whether to leave their Detroit neighborhood and join the flight to the white suburbs. Harry also maintains an increasingly uneasy relationship with the store’s upstairs tenants, Curtis and his teenage son Alvin, who are black. Inescapable are the longstanding tensions between blacks and Jews, which derive from a tangled history of thwarted expectations and differing patterns of upward mobility.
Early in the morning after Halloween, nine months before the uprising, Harry and his sister arrive at the store and find painted on the front window the words “Honky Jew Boy.” Alvin is suspected. Later during the riots, when buildings all around the store are erupting in flames, Harry’s building is one of the few to survive, partly because this time the white paint splashed across the front window spells out “Soul Brother.” Alvin wrote it to save his and Curtis’s home.
Harry is a sympathetic character, but he suffers by a lack of coming to grips. He ignores problems with the building’s boiler, so it eventually threatens to blow up in a cloud of steam. More important, he downplays and ignores the simmering social forces in his community, which do explode in violence. While he could have been more conscientious about the boiler, the social forces were beyond one man’s capacity to redress. But he ignored how those forces might affect his wife, daughters, and sister, even though all around him “should we stay?” and “should we go now?” were a dominant conversation. Curtis, especially, tries to cut through the cotton wool Harry surrounds himself with and give him a dose of reality. It’s easier just to keep on keepin on.
This is a beautifully written story by a thoughtful writer that contains barrels of good humor and fundamental humanity. It helps the reader examine many sides of a complex time that should not be forgotten as long as America’s issues with race remain unresolved.
This novel covers the months leading up to Detroit’s horrific 1967 summer and its aftermath. The riot/rebellion the city and its residents--and vicariously, the entire country--experienced in July 1967 lasted five days, 43 people died, more than a thousand were injured, and the associated fires destroyed thousands of buildings. The city has never recovered.
Messer’s story details the intersection of lives, as well—black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, parents and children. In the unsettled time leading up to the July events, Harry Levine—the Jewish owner of a wholesale shoe store founded by his father—and his family members and neighbors debate whether to leave their Detroit neighborhood and join the flight to the white suburbs. Harry also maintains an increasingly uneasy relationship with the store’s upstairs tenants, Curtis and his teenage son Alvin, who are black. Inescapable are the longstanding tensions between blacks and Jews, which derive from a tangled history of thwarted expectations and differing patterns of upward mobility.
Early in the morning after Halloween, nine months before the uprising, Harry and his sister arrive at the store and find painted on the front window the words “Honky Jew Boy.” Alvin is suspected. Later during the riots, when buildings all around the store are erupting in flames, Harry’s building is one of the few to survive, partly because this time the white paint splashed across the front window spells out “Soul Brother.” Alvin wrote it to save his and Curtis’s home.
Harry is a sympathetic character, but he suffers by a lack of coming to grips. He ignores problems with the building’s boiler, so it eventually threatens to blow up in a cloud of steam. More important, he downplays and ignores the simmering social forces in his community, which do explode in violence. While he could have been more conscientious about the boiler, the social forces were beyond one man’s capacity to redress. But he ignored how those forces might affect his wife, daughters, and sister, even though all around him “should we stay?” and “should we go now?” were a dominant conversation. Curtis, especially, tries to cut through the cotton wool Harry surrounds himself with and give him a dose of reality. It’s easier just to keep on keepin on.
This is a beautifully written story by a thoughtful writer that contains barrels of good humor and fundamental humanity. It helps the reader examine many sides of a complex time that should not be forgotten as long as America’s issues with race remain unresolved.
February 8, 2013
It was ok. The way the book was written was clumsy and didn't flow well. I found it only mildly interesting because I am from the Detroit area, and the story takes place there. It talks a lot about the area and the race issues that bubbled up in the 1960's.
July 14, 2017
Yes, I am aware that this is my own book, but I reread it (after many years) to prepare for an event next Thursday, at the Detroit Historical Museum, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riot/rebellion. https://detroithistorical.org/detroit.... I didn't give it five stars because I barely give anything five stars, but I was overall pleased at my exploration of this difficult time and these thorny issues of race relations, especially between Jews and blacks.
September 15, 2025
Found it very good but I grow up in the “60” in Detroit
February 17, 2014
There were a few things I liked very much: an early reference to John Watson who went on to be involved in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the influence of the 10 Points of the Black Panther Party on Harry Levine, and a wonderful chapter (Boiler) in which Harry and his Black tenant Curtis talk about race.
This was somewhat of a slow read, partly because of the style and partly because it's a book that raises ideas to consider. There is much sadness in the book; the sadness due to the lack of real communication, the sadness due to the lack of significant change. I thought the novel captured what is rarely discussed about the 1960's: that it was not just a time of hope, but for many it was a time of fear.
This was somewhat of a slow read, partly because of the style and partly because it's a book that raises ideas to consider. There is much sadness in the book; the sadness due to the lack of real communication, the sadness due to the lack of significant change. I thought the novel captured what is rarely discussed about the 1960's: that it was not just a time of hope, but for many it was a time of fear.
March 24, 2010
I loved reading this book. Millicent and I went to hear the author speak at the Jewish Community Center Library. Susan Messer told us that each of the chapters has a one word title except Riot/Rebellion because the white community saw it as a riot, while the black community felt it was a rebellion against unfair treatment. She compared the boiler in the basement of the store to pressure building up in the community until it spilled over in violence. The chapter with the woman's meeting gave her a chance to explore the variety of opinions about their relationship to blacks in the Jewish community at that time.
The author has a full time job as an editor, she writes on the weekends.
The author has a full time job as an editor, she writes on the weekends.
May 31, 2011
This writer does a good job with tension. The book is written against the backdrop of the 1968 race riot (/rebellion) in Detroit and focuses on white flight (Jewish flight, in this case) and how the Jewish folks in this story are realizing some similarities between their history and the history of the black people living in their city. You feel the tension between the Jewish and Black characters in the book--especially the main characters.
This writer, however, is not a very good writer, IMHO. The devise she uses--a long sentence followed by a medium sentence which repeats the theme, followed by a very short sentence which repeats the same idea again--gets very old, very fast.
This writer, however, is not a very good writer, IMHO. The devise she uses--a long sentence followed by a medium sentence which repeats the theme, followed by a very short sentence which repeats the same idea again--gets very old, very fast.
August 17, 2011
My personal experiences caused me to easily relate to the story and characters. The author is a good story teller; character development is not her greatest strength. But the story of the Detroit riots is well told from two major perspectives - that of the Detroit Jewish community, poised to take flight to the suburbs, and from that of African-American Detroiters. I enjoyed the read.
February 10, 2011
Enjoyed the historical fiction of an era I vaguely remember as a child, but did not always understand. Had to take it back to the library (too many books checked out at the same time). I'll will take it out and finish when time allows.
May 5, 2011
I had an extremely difficult time getting inot this book and relating to the charatcer, or even being that interested in them. However, my parents, who were born and raised in Detroit very much related to this book. Much of what happened in the book happened around them.
July 28, 2011
While I lived through this period, it was fascinating reading this story and feeling the sentiments, both good and bad, expressed in this historical novel. I believe being a Detroit native made this book even more interesting for me than it might be for someone not from the Detroit area.
July 21, 2013
I liked this book. It was unknown to me when I chose it to read. The street and area references were familiar to my husband and others who grew up in the Detroit area. I loved the jewish references. The writing style was terrific.
April 4, 2015
The writing style is a bit stilted. I did find this book somewhat interesting, though. It is historical fiction. I enjoyed reading about real places. It also opened up a conversation between my mom and I about the riots of 1967. It was great to get her recollections of that time.
June 9, 2010
A fantastic read with great character development. Everyone I told about this book loved it.
March 2, 2011
I grew up in Detoit and lived there during the riots. I thought it was a very good book.
May 17, 2011
If you grew up in Detroit in the 60's, this book will resonate, not to mention, stick with you. Caution: it is not, as advertised, about the 1967 riot as much as it is about population migration.
September 8, 2011
Insightful. The same questions are still being asked and the meaningful conversations are still on a small scale.
June 10, 2013
I didn't hate this book, but I didn't love it either. People from Detroit might enjoy reading it for the local references and flavor.
July 31, 2013
I really liked this book! I live and work in the Detroit and it was awesome to be familiar with the setting in such an intimate way. The ending really touched me. I recommend it.
November 23, 2013
I'm not sure why I liked this, but I did.
June 16, 2014
I literally could not put this book down...read it in a day. A well written novel centering around Detroit just before the riots of 1967.
January 20, 2016
This is a book that returns those of us who were in the Detroit area during the riots to that time. Very thoughtful and nostalgic. Very nicely done.
April 12, 2017
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The author had a strong nonfiction background that I think really worked for this novel. The strong elements of this story were setting, characters, and historical details. The book could have been read as a collection of short stories that shared the same characters and had a central theme running through it. The main character, Harry is a methodical protagonist who is sincere in his convictions, despite the fact that they may be unintentionally misplaced. His relationships with his wife Ruth and employee/tenant, Curtis are very well written and adds a lot of information about characters in this particular time and place. Ruth is my favorite character, and her interactions with some of the other characters in the story do a great job of informing the reader of the sociological issues going on prior to the Detroit Riots/Rebellion.
In my bookclub, there was some disagreement as to whether the plot was strong enough to carry the story. I conceded that plot wasn't compelling in a typical fictional story, but I argued that this didn't make the book any lesser for it. I think the plot of the characters is a secondary plot to the setting and characters that exist in a powder keg environment - and it only takes a few incidental events to cause it to explode. The only weakness in the story was that the metaphors were a little heavy-handed. This book succeeds on being close to a work of non-fiction that contains fictional characters - so the metaphors of the boiler room, the Egyptian plague, and other metaphysical-type events seemed out of place. However, with that being said - the flashback scene where Harry is in the DIA watching the Diego mural creation was some brilliant writing. It felt out of place in relation to the rest of the story, but damn - was it enjoyable to read.
All in all, I give this book 4.25 stars. And I would recommend this book to readers of mostly non-fiction and short stories, or enthusiasts of Detroit-era fiction.
In my bookclub, there was some disagreement as to whether the plot was strong enough to carry the story. I conceded that plot wasn't compelling in a typical fictional story, but I argued that this didn't make the book any lesser for it. I think the plot of the characters is a secondary plot to the setting and characters that exist in a powder keg environment - and it only takes a few incidental events to cause it to explode. The only weakness in the story was that the metaphors were a little heavy-handed. This book succeeds on being close to a work of non-fiction that contains fictional characters - so the metaphors of the boiler room, the Egyptian plague, and other metaphysical-type events seemed out of place. However, with that being said - the flashback scene where Harry is in the DIA watching the Diego mural creation was some brilliant writing. It felt out of place in relation to the rest of the story, but damn - was it enjoyable to read.
All in all, I give this book 4.25 stars. And I would recommend this book to readers of mostly non-fiction and short stories, or enthusiasts of Detroit-era fiction.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews