Melting Point Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land

Rachel Cockerell, Henry Goodman

eAudio - 2025

Longlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionA New York Times Most Anticipated BookThis dazzling, innovative family memoir tells the story of a long-lost plan to create a Jewish state in Texas.On June 7, 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamed, but to Texas. The man who persuades the passengers to go is David Jochelmann, Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather. The journey marks the beginning of the Galveston Movement, a forgotten moment in history when ten thousand Jews fled to Texas in the leadup to World War I.The charismatic leader of the movement is Jochelmann's closest friend, Israel Zangwill, whose novels have made him famous across Europe and ...America. As Eastern Europe becomes infected by antisemitic violence, Zangwill embarks on a desperate search for a temporary homeland—from Australia to Canada, Angola to Antarctica—before... more