The Longest Ride

At 91, dying of lung cancer, Ira Levinson by his own admission is “the last of [his] kind” (1): a Southern Jew, raised by immigrant parents with an old-school code of morality, integrity, and honesty; a small business owner who ran his family’s haberdasher shop until his retirement; a widower married for more than 50 years. Ira knows the world has changed during his lifetime.

Now, on his way to visit Black Mountain College in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains as he has done every year to celebrate his wedding anniversary (he and his wife Ruth honeymooned in the mountains), he skids on an icy stretch. His truck lands on an embankment. His head is bleeding, and he fears his arm may be broken. It is snowing. He is cold, in pain, and helpless. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he hears a familiar voice. “You must wake up, Ira” (8). It is Ruth, who died nearly 10 years earlier.

Ruth encourages Ira to remember when they first met. She was the daughter of Austrian Jewish immigrants. Her father, a respected university art history professor who left Germany to save his family from the threat of Hitler, couldn’t find a teaching job, so he became a carpenter.