GOLDEN WINDOWS

Five stories, spanning the years from 1910 to 1954, about three generations of a Jewish family. In the title story, the widow Zehava Genzel and her seven children live in four crowded rooms where, though their means are meager, comfort and companionship are ample. Pnina, eight, is on her way to buy bread when ``something, some light, flashes at the very edge of her vision'' and she catches her first glimpse of a shop, brimming with curios, whose windows shine golden in the sunlight. In ``Beyond the Cross-Stitch Mountains. 1948,'' Pnina's niece, Daskeh, runs away with her friend Danny through war-torn Jerusalem to visit Danny's estranged aunt; returning, Danny is hit by a stray bullet. ``Daskeh lifted the boy onto her hip, as she had seen mothers do with small children. He was not as heavy as a big box of groceries, but she had never had to carry a box of groceries so far.'' Taking responsibility for her actions, she delivers the boy safely home. Rich in incident and telling detail: a memorable offering of shadow and light that absolutely shimmers. (Fiction. 10+)