THE OLD STORIES "The Old Strories"is a family story about a 17 year old Jewish Russian immigrant, apprenticed to a metal worker, who takes advantage of Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 to desert the Navy at Vladivostok and escape to Manchuria, and then tgo North America.. He earns his passage across the Pacific to Canada by doing two years hard labor building the Northern Canadian Railway. He has left the world of pogroms with no education other than his Talmud Torah lessons in the Ukraine; and entered the new world via Vancouver, Canada instead of Ellis Island. He marries a well educated Polish rabbi's daughter provided by a match-maker and begins raising a family but his English is poor, and his limited Russian Talmud Torah education has taught him little but Biblical morality rules. When the family moves to Cleveland, his wife must take the lead in running the family's grocery store, and he's sidelined, as an embarrassment by his American born sons because of his foreignness, and his lack of much education. He overcomes his relegation to the sideline with personal courage, through the simple lessons he's learned in his Ukrainian Hebrew school, and by his empathy for others, learned from his reading of Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish. He temporarily leaves his home after WWII, volunteering as the oldest sailor on a journey across the Atlantic to be part of American Jewry's contribution to illegally transporting displaced Holocaust survivors to Palestine before 1948. The story is written against the background of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, Russia's emergence into the 20th Century, and the immigration of Jews to British Palestine. Both spirituality and history motivate the protagonist. Formerly a lawyer, Mr. Selcer retired to writing, and is the author of a mystery series known as the Buckeye Barrister Mysteries, in which there are four books. He also recently won a first place in category award from Chanticleer Reviews for his historical fiction novel "Lincoln's Hat and the TEA Movement's Anger. "The Old Stories may currently be purchased from Amazon at www.com/DAVID SELCER --or--David Selcer--12.95: Biblio Bookstore