Helmi’s Shadow: A Journey of Survival from Russia to East Asia to the American West by David Horgan (review)

In Helmi’s Shadow David Horgan chronicles the lives of two Russian Jewish women (his mother, Helmi, and his grandmother, Rachel) who lived as stateless refugees in China and Japan during the first half of the twentieth century, undergoing years of privation and prejudice, until they became American citizens, settling finally in Reno (Nevada). “This is an intimate story about my family, not a scholarly history. Nevertheless, I have made every effort to describe events, places, and people as accurately as possible,” writes Horgan (xi). Certainly, the book, written in a spare prose and with plenty of illustrations, succeeds in combining the author’s compelling personal exploration of his family’s past with a historically grounded narrative that gives visibility to overlooked stories of immigrants in the American West.

The first section of the book, covering 1896 to 1946, focuses on the fight for survival of a family forced to leave Russia during the pogroms and living through war and hardship in East Asia. Horgan offers a detailed account of his family’s harsh times in cities such as Odessa, Harbin, Shanghai, and Kobe, revealing the complex construction of an identity for these stateless refugees: “They had no citizenship anywhere. They had no true home” (xvii). It may be argued that the author himself first has to come to terms with his family past and, in particular, with his immigrant heritage in order to be able to construct his personal and cultural identity because, after all, progression forward often coexists with remembering and understanding the past.

The second part of this memoir addresses the experiences of Helmi and her family in the American West and, in particular, in Reno, the author’s birthplace. This section sharply contrasts with the previous one because it takes place almost entirely in this single setting of Reno. Furthermore, in this part the author also becomes a character in the story. Although this change of roles may seem somewhat problematic, particularly as the author grows older and becomes more visible in the memoir, in general Horgan manages to offer a proper transition between the different chapters of this section, refusing to make himself the center of his family’s story. He offers a vivid portrait of the experience of immigration in postwar America, illustrated by a family that epitomizes multiculturalism and religious diversity at different levels (including a Jewish mother born in Japan, a Russian grandmother, and an Irish Catholic American father). Horgan’s description of his family’s immigrant life in the American West resonates with authenticity, capturing his mother’s quick assimilation into American society and his grandmother’s fears and difficult adjustment. Their Reno life includes joys and tragedies, even a few episodes of prejudice and rejection, often linked to their Jewish identities. However, the family soon becomes “a somewhat normal 1950s middle-class family” (173), and they achieve both acceptance and respect by the mainstream Reno community.

Interestingly enough, Horgan’s memoir does not emphasize the traditional topics of vice, gambling, and divorce as the basis of the Reno lifestyle, drawing attention instead to the ordinary lives of its inhabitants. Thus, the book provides the reader with engaging descriptions of family celebrations, theater productions, school, illnesses, and Helmi’s new marriage after her husband’s death. Horgan’s departure from overused views of Reno as “the sin city” and of Nevada in general as “the sin state” and his emphasis on the daily struggles of immigrants who manage to overcome hardships and prejudice to succeed in the Silver State place his book close to other remarkable memoirs on immigration in Nevada, such as Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land (1957) or Emma Sepúlveda-Pulvirenti’s From Border Crossings to Campaign Trail: Chronicle of a Latina in Politics (1998).

Readers seeking personal approaches to immigration in the American West will certainly...