by Philip Roth · 2010
Set in Newark in the summer of 1944, the novel follows playground director Bucky Cantor as a polio epidemic spreads through his Jewish neighborhood, forcing him to weigh his duty to the children under his care against an offer to join his fiancée Marcia at a Pocono Mountains summer camp, Indian Hill. The narrative moves between the fear and death on the Chancellor Avenue playground and camp life at Indian Hill, including Indian Night ceremonies and a climactic javelin-throwing scene.