New York Times Book Review
November 25, 2007

Baker's Million
By Anne Mendelson

The author’s uncle, who ran a day-old-bread store and lived in squalor, secretly amassed a fortune.
Read the review and the first chapter!

Los Angeles Times
November 3, 2007

Remembering a lifetime of hard work in the family bakery on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
By Dinah Lenney, Special to The Times

A few chapters into Mort Zachter's memoir, "Dough," his father takes him on a tour of Second Avenue in Manhattan, where the greats of the Yiddish theater once performed to packed houses. "Now they're gone," says Phil Zachter, with palpable regret. "Where did they go?" young Mort later asks his mother. She answers, in Yiddish, that she hasn't a clue. Read the complete review...

Sun-Sentinel
September 11, 2007

'Dough' relates to both money, baking in memoir

The title of this memoir, "Dough," is meant to convey the two meanings of the word: a mixture of flour and other ingredients stiff enough to knead before baking and, more colloquially, money. The dough for baking refers in the book to the store established by the author's grandparents on New York's Lower East Side. Dough, as money, is a major element in the story. Read the rest of the review...

Publishers Weekly
Dough: A Memoir
Mort Zachter
Univ. of Georgia, $24.95
(182p)
ISBN 978-0-8203-2934-5

After losing his job as an accountant, enrolling in night law school and taking out a second mortgage to support his family, Zachter answered the phone in 1994 and was asked by a banker if he would like to take control of his uncle Harry's seven-figure money market account. What he at first assumed was a practical joke turned out to be true-Harry had been living like a pauper in a housing project while running a "day-old bread store" on New York's Lower East Side for 60 years. Zachter's memoir alternates between his imaginings of daily life at the bakery from the 1940s through the '60s and his unearthing of his family's financial secrets in the 1990s. Upon stumbling on a stockpile of crumbling two-dollar bills stashed away in Harry's fruitcake boxes, a relative jokes that Zachter really is from old money. In seeking to reconcile decades of financial stress with his sudden inheritance, Zachter notes, "Multiple lifetimes of nothing but hard work and deprivation had amassed this fortune. But what good had it done?" The answer, he decides after realizing that he will never have to worry about paying the bills, is in "the gift of time" to write this book. This rich story pays off with honest but lighthearted discoveries about loyalty and wealth. (Sept.)

Kirkus Reviews magazine
July 15, 2007

In 1994, after a lifetime of scrimping and barely making do, the 36-year-old author discovered that his two bachelor uncles had accumulated five million dollars in savings--all of it coming his way.

Harry and Joe Wolk ran a bread store that their parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants, founded on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1926. Their sister, Zachter's mother, gave up her dreams of teaching to work full-time for free at the family store; her husband pitched in after his regular hours as an unemployment insurance claims examiner. Young Mort slept in the kitchen of his parents' rundown one-bedroom apartment; he learned to consider a career in writing a fantasy and instead became a CPA. The question of why his uncles would sit on so much wealth rather than, say, help put Zachter through college, is never answered. Uncle Joe died before the story begins, and Uncle Harry was suffering from Alzheimer's when his nephew learned of his millions in brokerage accounts. Apparently, they had the tormented relationship with money all too common among immigrants. Nonetheless, the author winningly details the prickly love of his close-knit family and the endless hours they put into running the beloved store. Scenes of the annual gathering after Passover dinner to count the food stamps acquired throughout the year are both touching and appalling. Zachter charmingly portrays the changing Lower East Side and the shifting relationship his uncles had with their patrons. Prices varied according to what they estimated each customer could pay (some got their bread for free), and Uncle Harry had a habit of supporting members of the community who were unable to pay their bills. Yet when his own nephew was out of work, he slipped him.two dollars. Zachter never seems bitter, describing the discovery of his uncles' secret hoard with such surpassing sweetness and affection that readers won't dream of envying his newfound wealth.

Occasionally uneven prose more than redeemed by a warm family narrative.

Praise for Dough

"What if, after a life of struggle, you found out you were about to inherit several million dollars? Run to the Mercedes dealer? Call your travel agent? Call Paine Webber? Mort Zachter did none of the above. Mort turned first into an investigator, trying to unlock the mystery of how his modest, bread-selling family amassed a secret fortune. And then Mort turned into a writer, putting down the tale in this delightful and elegant book. Read it. It will make you smile and see that sometimes good things happen to good people."

--Ari L. Goldman, author of Living a Year of Kaddish

"With a sense of detail as sharp as the perceptions of a quietly observing child and with the insight and compassion of an adult, Mort Zachter takes us back to the Manhattan of the sixties, where he gracefully and wittily examines the mysteries--and baffling complexities--of family, work, love and sacrifice."

--Elizabeth Frank, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Louise Bogan

"Dough is rising! More than just a story about bread or money, it's a beautifully written family memoir-with an astonishing twist!-that brings to life a vanished Lower East Side and the people who walked its streets. Mort Zachter's keen eye and humor will keep you reading way past your bedtime."

--Hettie Jones, author of How I Became Hettie Jones

"Rich in spirit and detail, DOUGH is a sweet, wistful, and eloquent tale of faith, family and the real meaning of wealth."

--Debra Ginsberg, author of Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress

Read an interview with Mort Zachter