Take the D Train

On this day in April 1952, Frima Erlichman, devoted Bronx mother and not-so-devoted housewife, boards the D train to meet her flamboyant and rebellious sister-in-law, Beth, an artist who shares a Greenwich Village townhouse with her lover, Eduardo. Though their lives have taken very different turns, the two women have been fast friends since childhood. Time together is rare these days, and they are delighted to see each other and also to be on view to their unknown male admirers in the Manhattan restaurant where they’re having lunch together. They feel like carefree teenagers on a lark.

On this same day In Ossining, New York, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of treason, are in maximum security at Sing Sing, facing the electric chair. Neither Frima nor Beth dream that this grim reality will have far-reaching consequences for them personally; yet for Frima they begin with a panic attack that same afternoon, and for Beth, with a puzzling and bitter argument with Eduardo that evening.

These two women, connected by background, friendship, marriage, and the subway speeding underground from the north Bronx to lower Manhattan, will now also share a struggle for personal growth. They find themselves butting against the maze of orthodoxies—social, political, right, left, and center--that is the 1950s. In their characteristic styles they must either skirt around these obstacles or barge right through them.