One exceedingly hot summer’s morning in 1956 — the kind on which New Yorkers swore you could fry an egg on the sidewalk for breakfast — Josephine escaped the city heat to New York’s Catskill mountains. At the hotel pool, two men sitting under an orange and white striped sun umbrella, beckoned to Josephine. “You don’t happen to play skat, do you?” the one with the thick glasses and the thick accent asked. “As a matter of fact, I do,” Josephine said. And the rest is history.
— Stella and the Golden Thread