LINDA KASS

While this photo shows passengers leaving a docked ship likely during the war era, the people don’t have luggage and they are dressed too well to have made the two-week trip across the Atlantic. Typically, immigrants who travelled to American on steamships filled the deck upon approaching Ellis Island, luggage in hand, duffels slung over their shoulders, fairly worn from their long journey at sea. At Ellis Island, they would exit the steamship onto a ferryboat that would transport them and moor

This photo shows the upper east side of Manhattan in the 1930s, a more residential rather than commercial area. In “The Suitcase,” Eli took his mother on a tour of New York skyscrapers in midtown during this time period, where they passed Rockefeller Plaza, Radio City Music Hall, the Chrysler Building at the corner of Forty-Second and Lexington and, finally, the Empire State Building. Later in the novel, in the story “Meeting John Brandeis,” Eli returned to New York but, again, was mostly in the

In early 1944, around the time this shot of the famous Ohio State 15th and High Street entrance was taken, Eli was drafted into the US Army and left the university, returning to complete his degree after the war, thanks to the GI Bill.