Books: God & Man

THE SACRIFICE (346 pp.) — Adele Wiseman—Viking ($3.95).

Subtitled "a novel of fathers and sons," The Sacrifice takes its theme from the Bible, the talk of its old people from the folklore of Sholom Aleichem and the chat ter of its young from the Bronx locutions of Arthur Kober. Abraham is a patriarch in the classic mold—huge, fork-bearded, devout. When two of his sons are mur dered in a pogrom, he flees from the Ukraine to Canada. The tragedy briefly robs Abraham of his faith in God, turns his wife Sarah into a mindless zombie, and weighs down the frail shoulders of...