Boundary Country

My family was haunted by the murder, even in the New World. I can't remember when I first was told the tale, since I'm unable to recall a time I wasn't aware my great-grandparents and a great-aunt died at the hands of an assailant in Amlin. This was the shtetl in Byelorussia where my father's people came from, a little distance northeast up the Dvina from Vitebsk. Perhaps I heard about the crime originally from my Aunt Zifra, my father's twin sister, or from my uncles on my father's side, or maybe from Reb Lucharsky. He was a melamed who came from Velizh, a town in the neighbourhood of Amlin, and so he was classified as a landsman and welcomed as such in our house. "A terrible, terrible thing," was the invariable comment that followed yet another retelling of how my zayde's father and mother and younger sister perished one dark night. - from "The Murder"Wayman, Tom is the author of 'Boundary Country', published 2007 under ISBN 9781897235256 and ISBN 1897235259.