A most useful and delighting book, Rochelle Ratner’s Leads does not presume its conclusions to be known. Any meaning is found only in the process of discovery the writing quickly becomes. What begins as a journey in search of connections with her long deceased grandmother grows into a spirited investigation of the experience previous generations of her family underwent as members of the Jewish immigrant population from Eastern Europe headed West in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It’s a pleasure to have this record of Ratner’s exploration of a side of her family’s past she has never before examined. She immerses herself in a personal journey that gradually extends beyond her own concerns. Thankfully, she resists self-indulgence, not providing a mere linear self-narrative, but rather letting the words of others and the historical record stand with unimpeded clarity.

W hat if...? is the kind of unanswerable question that can easily give us nightmares and our Revolutionary War produced dozens of those inquiries. What if, early in the war, the weather and British delays hadn’t helped Washington’s forces escape from their entrapment on Manhattan Island? What if the decisive battle at Saratoga had been won by Burgoyne and the European credit that battle produced for the young nation was not gained? What if the Hessians had been better prepared at Trenton? What if John Andre had not been captured and Arnold’s betrayal of West Point (with the real possibility of the capture of Washington himself) had been successful? What if General Greene had made a single misstep in the South and been defeated by Cornwallis there?