Yellow Jack and Turpentine is the first historical fiction novel about Jewish living in the Ozarks. Set in the 1880s and based on the memoir published in Documenting Jewish of the Ozarks a special double edition of OzarksWatch Magazine (and the most republished edition of OzarksWatch). It retells, in a compelling manner, the saga of the failed Am Olam commune in Northeastern Arkansas.
Yellow Jack is appropriate for young adult through adult audiences. We follow three families from Odessia, Russia to some place outside Newport, Arkansas. They leave their native city in 1882 to go to New York City. There they earn money to make the trip to Arkansas to meet fellow commune members who have already settled in the area. Without farming experience and because of the floodplain they chose, they cannot farm as they expected. They struggle to overcome poverty, yellow fever, and malaria. Finally, the leader, Moyshe Herder, accepts that they must end their dream of farming.