Escape Route
Escape Route is set in New York City during the tumultuous late 1960s. Told by teenager Zach, a first-generation son of Holocaust survivors and NY Mets fan, who becomes obsessed with the Vietnam War and with finding an escape route for his family for when he believes the US will round up and incarcerate its Jews. Zach meets Samm, a seventh-generation Manhattanite whose brother has returned from Vietnam with PTSD. Together they explore protest, friendship, music, faith, and love during a time littered with hope and upheaval around the globe.
Escape Route is Elan Barnehama's second novel. His work has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Entropy, Rough Cut Press, Boston Accent, Jewish Fiction, HuffPost, the New York Journal of Books, Public Radio, and elsewhere. He was a presenter at the 2019 Boston Book Festival, a Writer-In-Residence at Wildacres, NC, and Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, Fairhope, AL, and the fiction editor at Forth Magazine LA. He earned an MFA from UMass, Amherst, and a BA from Binghamton U. Elan has taught college writing, has worked with at-risk youth, had a gig as a radio news guy, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. He's a New Yorker by geography. A Mets fan by default.
