It was 13 degrees this morning as I trekked past Brooklyn’s McCarren Park with my back to a wind that felt like acid-dipped razor blades. As bad as this sounds, it wasn’t as awful as being sandwiched between two pod people blasting crappy nu metal on the L train. I looked around for my savior, and when he didn’t materialize (he was back the way I’d come, making toast probably), my eyes came across a watery blue book jacket: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

While the title conjured nonfiction, I pegged it for a novel, which it is, indeed. Krauss, a Brooklyn-based writer, offers a sweeping tale about a book (and a love) lost in World War II Poland. That this was picked up by a young woman in my environs makes a lovely poetic sense: Williamburg and Greenpoint especially bear the mark of Polish immigrants. I hear Polish, in fact, more than I hear English on my side of McGuinness Boulevard. It’s the only place in New York City where natural blue eyes and blonde hair abound.

Even though Krauss’s book fast-forwards to contemporary New York City (the Lower East Side, I think), I can’t help but take this sighting as, well, a sign. I just finished an exhausting 650-page biography and am looking for an absorbing, economical read. It seems I’ve found my match, just out in very subway-friendly paperback.