Coney Island, 1939: On the eve of World War II, fifteen-year-old Harry Catzker spends his after-school hours on his bike, picking up betting slips from Coney Island carnival freaks for the local bookie and racing his imaginary sworn enemy, German Captain Ziegenbaum, whose ship menaces the coastline. His parents are in their own world: his father writes a serial novel for the local Yiddish newspaper by day and hangs out with other intellectuals at the Cafe Royal by night; his beautiful mother grows increasingly bitter, yearning for a glamorous life that is certain to be denied to the wife of a writer. As the lights of the Cyclone and Luna Park glow in the Coney Island night, Harry finds a surrogate family in the freaks and low-lifes. A premature victim of Weltschmerz, lovingly applied by loved ones, ignorant of its toxicity on the young, Harry ponders life, art, and philosophy, and politics with Aba, a Yiddish poet who boards with his family, yet he is unable to shake the dark foreboding of a disaster that finally materializes, changing his life utterly.

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