In The Free Thinkers: Two Novellas, Layle Silbert evokes the immigrant experience of European Jews in turn-of-the-century Chicago and New York. Her characters trade Yiddish and Russian for English, work as tailors, watchmakers, and actors, and exchange old customs and dreams for new freedoms and disillusions. With a sharp eye for detail, Silbert traces the quiet cataclysms of uprooted lives. For Silbert the slightest gesture carries with it the weight of the world. Nothing happens, everything happens.