I Am the Clay

Book excerpt: “[Chaim] Potok writes powerfully about the suffering of innocent people caught in the cross-fire of a war they cannot begin to understand. . . . Humanity and compassion for his characters leap from every page.”—San Francisco Chronicle As the Chinese and the army of the North sweep south during the Korean War, an old peasant farmer and his wife flee their village across the bleak, bombed-out landscape. They soon come upon a boy in a ditch who is wounded and unconscious. Stirred by possessiveness and caring the woman refuses to leave the boy behind. The man thinks she is crazy to nurse this boy, to risk their lives for some dying stranger. Angry and bewildered, he waits for the boy to die. And when the boy does not die, the old man begins to believe that the boy possesss a magic upon which all their lives depend. . . .