Twelve years in the making, Harvy Simkovits’s memoir Just Lassen to Me! is a true, enthralling family and family business tale. WWII survivor, escapee from Soviet communism, and Canadian immigrant, Johnny Simkovits, amassed a fortune through hard work, gutsy moves, and devious means. Harvy’s Jewish mother, Anna, hid in Budapest during the war using false Christian papers and had her own unsettling stories of family survival and strife. Their son, Harvy, enticed to follow in his father’s finagling footsteps, works to reconcile, repudiate, and rectify his mom’s painful burdens and dad’s dubious legacy. Written with honesty, humor, and humility, this is a son’s story of surviving his turbulent family and survivor father.
“In Harvy Simkovits’ memoir of his complicated father, the son has assembled the weight of memories to impress upon the reader the stamp of this forceful man he loved and endured. Simkovits unknots the kinks of this big-hearted swindler, affectionate brawler, chivalrous womanizer and solicitous browbeater with panache. It is as much about the son’s struggle to uncouple from the sin and resolve the guilt as it is about a freewheeling father who could very well be the protagonist of a Canadian immigrant version of Mad Men. “
—Tom Daley, author of House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems.