The Lazarus Project

On March 2, 1908, 19-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, for reasons lost to history. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter for him. But instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him. When Shippy released a statement casting the foreigner Averbuch as an anarchist who had intended to assassinate him, America was ready to agree. It was a time when Chicago was still recovering from the Haymarket riots; anarchism and, especially, foreign-tongued immigrants were the big scare of mainstream America. A new wave of xenophobia was already sweeping through Chicago and the rest of the country when the Averbuch shooting set off a tumult that would involve Emma Goldman, marches in the streets, and a rash of scare headlines from coast-to-coast. Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, also from Eastern Europe, becomes obsessed with Lazarus's story - what really happened, and why?