Crisis follows crisis at a midtown real estate company in Three Lives in New York, a first novel by Beth Adelman. One day in February 1977, Natalie Herris, company president, is frightened that her kickback scheme has been discovered. Max Arnold, a reclusive Jewish Holocaust survivor and the company’s bookkeeper, must travel to the South Bronx, where, he’s been told, the buildings are on fire. Paul Gartner, company vice president, breaks up a fistfight in the office and is suspicious of Natalie’s activities. This evening, he intends to make up to his girlfriend for a jealous outburst.  

The three characters experience a tumultuous day that ends with peace for some and fear for others in a city that is also a character:

“This morning, New York had never seemed so dirty and so surprising in its ugliness and danger…Yet strangers crammed together here for one reason, Gartner thought as he ran with them down the steps to the 86th Street subway station. People would rather live with each other than live alone. When he left his apartment, he, too, could pretend that he wasn’t alone.” 

Beth Adelman, a native of the Bronx, has published short stories in print and online journals. Her story “Scenes from Childhood” and her book review “In the ‘Dream-Tossed Bronx’: An Introduction to Poet Naomi Replansky” have appeared in The Literary Bronx.

Beth can be contacted through her website, Bethadelmanfiction.com