You can take the boy out of Montana...

I've been meaning to post this for a few days. A recent illustration for the NY Times Book Review, for Boris Fishman's new novel Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo. The book centers on married couple Maya and Alex, immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus, respectively. Their son Max, who was adopted by the couple as a baby, begins to show strange, animal-like behavior. The three end up on a journey to Montana, Max's birthplace, to seek out the reason for his feral affectations.

Max isn't the only one with persistent bonds to his birthplace. As Cathleen Schine's review explains: "The Russian-speaking Jewish refugees (Maya and Alex, as well as Alex's parents)... have lost the Old Country twice, yet they are never quite free of it." I wanted to highlight the way that people remain connected to their origins. No matter where they end up, there often remains something to tether them to their beginnings. Read the review here, or better yet, get a copy of the book. Thank you to Matt Dorfman, my AD on this one!