How to Find Your Way in the Dark by Derek B. Miller

Published by Mariner Books on July 27, 2021

Billed as a “Sheldon Horowitz novel,” How to Find Your Way in the Dark features the elderly protagonist of Norwegian by Night during his tween and teen years. Beginning in the years before America’s entrance into World War II, Derek Miller’s novel focuses on Jewish boys who can’t understand why Americans of all religions aren’t asking their government to join the fight against Hitler. The story follows Sheldon from the age of eleven until his early adulthood, when America has finally entered the war and the country seems on the brink of confronting its own history of antisemitism. The novel’s social and political content serves as a background to a coming-of-age crime story about a boy who dreams of revenge for his father’s death.

Sheldon’s mother burned to death in a movie theater in Hartford. His father Joseph blamed himself for his wife’s presence in the theater, guilt that Sheldon believed his father did not deserve. Sheldon learned to hunt and shoot from his father. They made a living selling pelts to the Krupinski family, whose members skimmed the proceeds by lying about the money they received from buyers. Joseph knew he was being cheated but didn’t want to make waves. The consequence of not making waves is one of the novel’s themes.

The Krupinskis were cheating a mob family as well as Joseph. In the novel’s opening pages, Joseph borrows a truck from the Krupsinskis. A mob killer mistakes Joseph for a Krupinski and runs him off the road. Sheldon walks away from the accident, but his father dies. Getting revenge against the driver becomes young Sheldon’s mission in life.

Now an orphan, Sheldon goes to live with his father’s uncle, who is raising his son and daughter on his own. Abe and Mirabelle are both a bit older than Sheldon but they get along with him. Sheldon’s best friend, however, is Lenny Bernstein, whose plan in life is to make money as a comedian.

When Sheldon is fifteen, he and Lenny con their way into summer jobs as bellboys in a fancy Catskills resort. Lenny tries out his brand of anti-Nazi humor at various venues before Jewish audiences, earning lots of applause and laughter before he’s fired for telling political jokes instead of one-liners. In the background, albeit almost as an afterthought, Abe moves to Canada where he can enroll in the RAF and fight Nazis.

The plot gives Sheldon a chance to avenge his father’s death through a clever series of crimes at the resort. Sheldon’s scheme puts him at odds with Mirabelle, who indulges her desire for the good life by visiting the resort with a man Sheldon instantly loathes. The story combines humor and suspense as Sheldon tries to gain revenge without being murdered. When Sheldon moves to New York a few years later, revenge comes back to bite him, placing him in peril again.

How to Find Your Way in the Dark has been compared, at least in its blurbs, to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I had the sense that Miller intended to invite that comparison. The plots are entirely different but Miller’s story of young Jewish males on the East Coast during the pre-war years assures that the novels share certain themes. Chabon’s book is more nuanced than Miller’s in its depiction of American attitudes during the pre-war years, although Miller does give older Jewish characters the opportunity to explain their reluctance to work more aggressively to influence anti-Hitler opinion prior to Germany’s declaration of war against the United States. Chabon’s novel also creates a more carefully defined sense of American history that Miller’s.

While Miller’s book isn’t as remarkable as Chabon’s, few books are. If Miller’s novel comes up short, it is only by comparison to a Pulitzer Prize winner. Miller’s characters are sympathetic, the story is entertaining, and the sociopolitical background, while a bit heavy-handed, never threatens to overwhelm the storytelling.

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