Humorous Fiction/Romantic Comedy/Historical Fiction/Jewish Fiction
Date Published: July 9th, 2024
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Abe Goldstein’s life is speeding downhill faster than a Coney Island roller coaster.
His Manhattan diamond company is on life support. Crime is so bad that
muggers are mugging other muggers. And his overbearing mother has gone
behind his back and posted his profile on a Jewish dating site. Now,
Abe’s phone is blowing up with messages from women who want to marry
him.
At the advice of his accountant, Abe flees to Honolulu and cuts a deal with an Okinawan family to buy their diamond ring business. The owner’s beautiful daughter Kiyoko stays on as a consultant, and Abe finds himself falling hard for her.
But there’s trouble in paradise. Abe’s meddlesome mother hires an unscrupulous matchmaker to break the pair up and find a nice Jewish girl for him instead. To make matters worse, a rival diamond firm connected to Japanese organized crime is bent on destroying Abe’s fledgling business, Shaloha Gems.
As Abe navigates the twists and turns of his unconventional island life, everything he values is in jeopardy. He may be willing to damage his relationship with his mother to preserve his romantic relationship. But will he crumble under the pressure if he loses his reputation and his budding diamond empire too? Or will a discovery that leads back to the darkest days of World War II open an unexpected door to a brighter future?
Read an excerpt below
About the Author
Born and raised in New Jersey, Terry Chodosh earned his MS in criminology from Florida State University. Terry began his twenty-eight-year career with the United States Secret Service (USSS) in NYC and fulfilled assignments in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu field offices as well as in the Gerald Ford protective detail.
While assigned to the Honolulu office, Terry traveled extensively in Asia, conducting complex financial crime investigations and providing executive protection for US government officials, including the president and vice president of the United States. After retirement, Terry wanted to tap into his humorous and creative side, which was often restrained throughout his career, so he began writing his novel Shaloha Gems.
Terry lives with his wife and son in Honolulu, Hawaii. He enjoys distance swimming in the ocean and outrigger canoe paddling, and he strives to stay one step ahead of skin cancer and tiger sharks.
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Abe
Goldstein stared out of the barred back-office window of his company, Goldy’s
Diamonds & Gems, which overlooked the rainy and grey 47th Street Diamond
District. The grimy man-trap door, the hallway entrance, and the lone off-duty
NYPD officer outside told the story of a city that had seen its best days and
was going downhill faster than a Coney Island roller coaster.
Abe thought even a roller
coaster goes back up again, but there was no way in hell that New York would
make a comeback. Since the Covid lockdowns, the huge spike in crime, and the
exit of most of his retail client base out of New York City to South Florida,
his retail business had dropped off a cliff, and his wholesale business was
barely keeping him afloat.
Today, Abe was meeting with his longtime friend and accountant
Adam Bushkin, whom Abe jokingly referred to as “Bombastic Buskin,” like Johnny
Carson’s accountant who had once recommended that Carson invest in X-rated
bookstores in Iran.
Like Abe, Adam was an Orthodox Jew who kept kosher, observed
Shabbat, and wore the yarmulke to show reverence for Hashem. He looked and
acted like a pudgy version of the old-time comedian Red Buttons, wearing the
mischievous look of a man always on the verge of laughter. This was their
quarterly meeting before tax filing, and Abe looked forward to it like he did a
root canal.
“So, Bombastic,” he said, “give me the good news first, so I can
smile for five seconds at least.”
Adam reported that, “The good news is that Katz’s Deli on Houston
Street downtown has a new lunch special: all-you-can-eat kosher pickles with
your fifty-dollar pastrami sandwich. The bad news is that revenues have sunk
into the toilet by over 50 percent. I hate to tell you, Abe, but your business
is on life support. You can’t hold on much longer. I suggest you consider
selling and moving out-of-state. My other clients in the diamond business have
moved to Florida — Miami, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach. The business district in
those cities looks like Tel Aviv.”
Abe chewed his lower lip unhappily. “My diamond clients who moved
there tell me the competition is so fierce that they’re all undercutting each
other, and their margins are slimmer than the Jewish book of business ethics.
They are making bupkis down there.”
Abe’s father, Moishe, had founded the business in New York City
after the war. Moishe was a Holocaust survivor of the Dachau concentration camp
and still had the tattoo on his left forearm. Now he had a scraggly white beard
and hunched back from old age, and the demeanor of a man who had seen much
suffering in his life.
Before the war, Moishe’s family had established diamond businesses
in Amsterdam and Antwerp. They’d lost everything after the Germans conquered
the Netherlands. Moishe’s parents, brothers, and sisters all perished in the
camps. Moishe was the youngest and survived to be liberated by the United
States Army. Later, he was sent to a displaced persons’ camp and was adopted by
the Goldstein’s, distant relatives who were also in the diamond business in New
York.
Abe resembled his father as a young man, but even more so the
movie star Adam Sandler, with curly brown hair and a well-trimmed beard that
accentuated his cleft chin and square jawline.
“Bombastic,” he exclaimed, “what am I going to do? We still have a
great supply line of diamond cutters in Tel Aviv and connections with De Beers
in Johannesburg. Come up with something!”
A week later, Adam called Abe and set up a lunch meeting at Katz’s.
The men slid into their usual booth, gripping pastrami sandwiches thick enough
to choke a horse. They munched on the endless pickle barrel gracing each table.
“There’s enough salt in these pickles to kill the entire
cardiology wing at Bellevue Hospital,” Abe joked.
“Abe, you are a young man, only forty. It will take at least fifty
years for Katz’s pickles to kill you — unless you marry a Jewish yenta. Then I
give you about twenty years or less.”
Abe wiped his mouth on a napkin and shot Adam a dour look. “Don’t
mention marriage. My mother is driving me crazy. She even bought me an online
subscription to JDate, that Jewish singles dating app. She put my photo and
cell phone numbers on the site. I got meshuga women contacting me day and
night. They only show headshots and describe themselves as voluptuous, so I am
guessing that some of these women are big enough to put license plates on them.”
His accountant smiled. “Abe, don’t choke on your pastrami sandwich
when I tell you this, but I think I found a gem of a wedding/engagement ring
company where the markups on diamond rings are double what they are in New
York.”
Abe arched a brow. “Oh, yes? Pray tell me where this gem is
located.”
“It’s in Honolulu, Hawaii.” Adam leaned across the table, eyes
twinkling. . .
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