The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
On a steamship from Danzig bound for New York furniture maker Otto Rotfeld dies suddenly from appendicitis leaving, secreted among his luggage, a golem commissioned from a dark kabbalistic sorcerer and intended to be Rotfeld’s wife.
In a shop in Lower Manhattan’s Little Syria an immigrant tinsmith attempts to repair an antique copper flask and accidentally releases a jinni an ancient spirit trapped inside the flask by a Bedouin wizard over a thousand years ago.
Adrift in a new world that is as dangerous as it is wondrous the golem and the jinni must each find their own way to survive, to blend into cultures that would destroy them if their true natures were ever revealed.
A chance meeting ignites an unlikely friendship between the pair, but tragedy tests the bonds of friendship as soon as they are formed. The past, however, refuses to stay buried and dark figures from their respective pasts have also crossed the ocean. Will the friendship between the golem and the jinni be able to withstand the coming trouble or will their different natures throw them apart leaving them alone and vulnerable in a strange new world.