"The First Seven Years" is a short story written by American novelist Bernard Malamud written in 1950 and first published in 1958. It tells the story of a Jewish shoemaker named Fed who is looking for a decent husband for his daughter Miriam, but she is not interested in his choice which is a young man called Max who is a college student. Indeed she is in love with her dad's assistant, Sobel who is a polish refugee.
In literary definition, an inciting moment is the event that hooks the reader to the story line. It the moment in which the reader gets the main idea on which the story will develop upon. The inciting incident in "The First Seven Years" is when Max enters Fed's shoe store in order to get one of his own shoe's repaired. That is when Fed shows a picture of Miriam to him in an attempt to set the two of them up for a date.