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said. Morris hesitated, and then offered, “There’s a concert downtown next Saturday night. If you’d like, I’ll get tickets.”
    That spring and summer, Golda and Morris spent every Sunday at a free concert in one of Denver’s parks. During the week, they attended lectures on science, philosophy, and psychology at the Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish immigrant aid society, or went rowing on Sloan’s Lake, where Morris read her Byron, Shelley, and The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
    Morris did more than ease Golda’s loneliness. He punctured the wall she’d erected to shield her vulnerability from a tough mother and an even tougher sister. Bluma and Sheyna both hid their worry behind sarcasm, their love beneath a mountain of hectoring. To survive, Golda had devel- oped a thick hide. Other men had offered her strident lectures on Marx- ism; Morris lavished her with the gentle gift of poetry, flowers he could ill afford, reproductions of paintings cut out of magazines framed for the walls of her tiny room. He became her teacher, her mentor, her brother, the first person to love Golda the woman.
    Morris is not particularly good-looking, but “he has a beautiful soul,” she admitted in a postcard to Regina.
    Those months in Denver were an intimate interlude in Golda’s life, an unusual moment of tenderness. Her time wasn’t spent on causes, on orga- nizing or mounting a bully pulpit, but on developing a soft side of herself that she had never seen. In turn, Golda infused Morris with her own vi- vacity and dynamism, ripping through his cocoon of reticence.
    Then, out of the blue, Golda received a letter from her father beseech- ing her to come home for her mother’s sake. It was the first time she’d heard from Moshe in almost two years, and she knew what it cost him to beg her—just as she knew how expensive her sojourn in Denver had be- come. She was in love with Morris, but she was working in a department store instead of studying. Her father promised that he and Bluma would support her decision to go to high school and become a teacher, if only she’d come back.
    The sole breadwinner in his family, Morris couldn’t follow her. None- theless, he encouraged her to go home, to heal the rift with her family and to study, promising that he’d join her as soon as possible so they could marry.
    * * *
    At the age of seventeen, Golda had already tamed her first unruly crew, her parents. When she reenrolled in high school, they offered not a mur- mur of protest. When she talked about teaching, Bluma stayed mum. The only battle they fought was over the identity of the author of the let- ters arriving from Denver, two, three, or four times a week. “Somebody,” Golda responded flipply when Bluma pressed for information. “So who’s this Mr. Somebody?”
    Frustrated by Golda’s secrecy, Bluma steamed opened two letters and told Tzipka, renamed Clara in America, to translate them. That night, Clara confessed her betrayal and Golda stopped talking to her mother for several days. Golda’s soon-to-be infamous wrath took its toll. Bluma never defied her again.
    Back home, Golda read through the long book list Morris had com- piled for her, Chekhov and Gogol, de Maupassant, Anatole France and
    H. G. Wells. She joined a small Yiddish literary society that brought speak- ers in from Chicago to discuss the classics. And she spent hours babbling to her friends about Denver and savoring every word Morris wrote to her.
    In her responses, Golda gushed out a torrent of insecurity. Am I smart enough? Pretty enough? Learned enough? Morris never seemed to tire of
    reassuring her. “I have repeatedly asked you not to contradict me on the question of your beauty,” he wrote. “Every now and then, you pop up with these timid and self-deprecating remarks. I can’t bear them.”
    Week after week, he limned his devotion. “If you were here now, oh how I would kiss you! But that can’t be . . . so accept some kisses from me sailing