A Plot You Could Just Plotz From

[Plotz = v. [intrans.] informal - collapse or be beside oneself with frustration; to burst]


The plot:-

Alice, the distinctly unhappy daughter of repressed New England Protestants, gratefully marries into the immigrant Ziplinsky family, whose company, Zip’s Candies, produces Little Sammies, Mumbo Jumbos and Tigermelts. She takes to both the family and the business with zealous fealty. Transforming herself into a model Jewish wife, she learns all the rules, recipes, holidays. “Ask me about Shavuot! Or how about that Tu Bishvat! I’ve got the scoop on Purim, the word on Haman and his tricorner hat.” Under the guidance of her father-in-law, she learns the candy business inside out.

There are two narratives at work here. One is about Alice’s doomed attempt to assimilate into the Ziplinskys and her husband’s ultimate betrayal. The other, even more compelling, concerns candy itself: how some of the brands we remember so vividly — Abba-Zaba bars, Peeps — owed their existence to the kitchen experiments of immigrants. Eli Czaplinsky, the founder of Zip’s, a street tough who may have been involved with the crime boss Lepke Buchalter, gets his inspiration for Little Sammies from thumbing obsessively through “Little Black Sambo” while on the lam.