Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard
Laura Bates, 2013
Sourcebooks
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402273148
Summary
While he was trying to break out of prison, she was trying to break in.
Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before—supermax solitary confinement.
In this unwelcoming place, surrounded by inmates known as the worst of the worst, is Larry Newton. A convicted murderer with several escape attempts under his belt and a brilliantly agile mind on his shoulders, Larry was trying to break out of prison at the same time Laura was fighting to get her program started behind bars.
Thus begins the most unlikely of friendships, one bonded by Shakespeare and lasting years—a friendship that, in the end, would save more than one life. (From the publisher.)
Watch Laura Bates on TED
Listen to Laura Bates on NPR
Author Bio
• Birth—1957
• Raised—state of Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia College, Chicago; M.A., Northeastern
Illinois University; Ph.D., Univeristy of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Terre Haute, Indiana
Laura Bates is a professor of English at Indiana State University, where she has taught courses on Shakespeare for the past fifteen years to students on campus and in prison.
Bates earned her B.A. degree from Columbia College in Chicago and her M.A. at Northeastern Illinois Univeristy. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Comparative Literature, with a focus on Shakespeare studies.
For more than 25 years she has worked in prisons as a volunteer and as a professor. She created the world’s first Shakespeare program in supermax—the long-term solitary confinement unit. Her work has been featured in local and national media, including two segments on MSNBC-TV’s Lock Up. She is the author of Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard (2013). Happily married for nearly thirty years, she and her husband Allan Bates, a retired professor and playwright, live in Indiana. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Indiana State literature professor Bates details her remarkable work teaching Shakespeare to inmates, an experience that proved momentous for both teacher and students....[who]discuss and dissect themes of revenge, criminality, honor, and love—from Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello, among others. Opening the mind's prison proves enormously gratifying, not to mention effective, for Bates as she offers the prisoners an alternative to frustrated violence. Her brave, groundbreaking work continues to be closely watched and modeled.
Publishers Weekly
From breaking out to breaking through, that’s what reading Shakespeare did for Indiana federal prison inmate Larry Newton, who was locked in solitary confinement for more than 10 years.... The journey he makes and the impact it has on Bates herself combine to form a powerful testament to how Shakespeare continues to speak to contemporary readers in all sorts of circumstances.
Booklist
The unorthodox bonding of a Shakespeare instructor and a convicted murderer. Beginning in 2003, English professor Bates (Indiana State Univ.) began an inaugural group-study program in a solitary confinement prison space.... The author emerges as a selfless tutor dedicated to education without reservation, and she fought hard to educate Newton and other surprisingly charismatic inmates, whom she profiles with a dignified mixture of pride and humanitarianism. The 10 years spent in supermax became a transformative journey for students and teacher alike. An eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books, self-discipline and the Bard of Avon.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently debating the constitutionality of capital punishment and life without parole for juvenile offenders. What is your opinion? Do you think that Larry, who came to prison at 17, should spend the rest of his life behind bars?|
2. What kinds of conditions are appropriate for violent offenders? Do you agree that long-term solitary confinement is, as judged by Human Rights Watch, inhumane? What about solitary confinement for juveniles, as Larry experienced starting at the age of ten, described in Chapter 15 (“Supermax Kid”)?
3. Is rehabilitation possible? What evidence can prove a prisoner’s rehabilitation? Do you think that Larry is rehabilitated?
4. Research has shown that higher education results in lowered recidivism and is, therefore, cost-efficient use of tax dollars: it is cheaper to educate than to incarcerate. But are prisoners deserving of higher education? Should their education be funded by tax dollars or by the prisoners themselves…or some other way? Should all prisoners have this opportunity, including lifers?
5. A teacher’s ultimate accomplishment is when his or her student becomes a teacher, passing on the lessons learned. What lessons did Larry learn from Dr. Bates? Do you think that he was a good teacher in prison—and do you believe that he would be a good teacher in society if given the chance?
6. Would most husbands be as supportive of their wife’s prison work as Allan was? Why or why not? Would you support such work done by your own spouse?
7. In what ways was the work of Dr. Bates with prisoners grounded in her parents’ experiences as war refugees and immigrants? Do you think, as she does, that they would have approved of her work? Why or why not? Was she right to keep it a secret from them?
8. Both Larry and Dr. Bates accepted a number of challenges in their work. What are some of these challenges—and how did they face them?
9. “This prison doesn’t matter,” says Larry referring to the prison of concrete and steel. Breaking out of habitual patterns of self-destructive thinking can be more damaging and more difficult to break out of. How did Larry break those chains, with the help of Shakespeare?
10. Larry feels that we create our own personal prisons, and the author has identified a few of hers throughout the book. Do you feel that they both successfully overcame their own prisons?
11. Every one of the prisoners in the Shakespeare group said that he wanted to make a positive contribution to society despite his transgressions. What kinds of contributions are prisoners uniquely able to provide?
12. Macbeth said that he dared not to look on it (his murder) again, but Larry did. The book states that getting convicted killers to look on their crime (i.e., to examine the reasons for the offense) is a key to keeping them from killing again. Why do you think that is so important?
13. Acknowledging responsibility for his crime—as Larry has done—is considered to be an essential ingredient for demonstrating rehabilitation. Why do you think that is so?
14. Look at the following three chapters and consider how you would have reacted.
Chapter 6 – Newton’s In
Chapter 25 – The Shower (Me)
Chapter 26 – All Hands On Deck
15. Think about the Shakespeare plays you have read (or read a new one) and consider the ways in which you can find personal relevance in the four-hundred-year-old text. Do one, or more, of the characters have any traits that you have? Does he or she face a challenge that you have faced? Are there relationships among two or more of the characters that are similar in some ways to your own relationships?
16. What are your own personal prisons—and how can you overcome them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir
George Estreich, 2013
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399163340
Summary
When Laura Estreich is born, her appearance presents a puzzle: does the shape of her eyes indicate Down syndrome, or the fact that she has a Japanese grandmother?
In this powerful memoir, George Estreich, a poet and stay-at-home dad, tells his daughter's story, reflecting on her inheritance—from the literal legacy of her genes, to the family history that precedes her, to the Victorian physician John Langdon Down's diagnostic error of "Mongolian idiocy." Against this backdrop, Laura takes her place in the Estreich family as a unique child, quirky and real, loved for everything ordinary and extraordinary about her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
George Estreich's collection of poems, Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, won the Gorsline Prize and was published in 2004. A woodworker, fly-fisherman, and guitar player, he has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at several universities. He lives in Cornvallis, Oregon, with his wife Theresa, a research scientist, and his two daughters, Ellie and Laura.. (From .)
Book Reviews
The moving, heartbreakingly lucid story about how a family learned to cope with, and ultimately appreciate, a daughter born with Down syndrome. Neither [ Estreich nor his wife] was prepared for the news that the baby girl they would name Laura had Trisomy 21, Down syndrome. Both were devastated; but for the author, the diagnosis had even more profound implications.... With the humility born of painful experience, Estreich concludes that "it is not the chromosome, but our response to it, that shapes the contour of a life." A poignantly eloquent meditation on the genetics of belonging.
Kirkus Reviews
The Shape of the Eye is a memoir of a father’s love for his daughter, his struggle to understand her disability, and his journey toward embracing her power and depth. Estreich is raw and honest and draws us each into a new view of what it means to be 'human’ and what it means to be ‘different.’ This book is beautifully written, poetically insightful, and personally transformative. To read it is to rethink everything and to be happy because of the journey.
Timothy P. Shriver, Ph.D. - Chairman & CEO of the Special Olympics
The Shape of the Eye personalizes Down syndrome, bringing a condition abstracted in the medical literature into the full dimensionality of one family's life. It's brave of George Estreich to make what has befallen his family so public, trusting of him to let an unknown audience second-guess the family's choices. Because he's opened his home and heart in this memoir, we are privileged to witness in chaotic, heart-wrenching, joyous detail what it means to have and to love a child with Down syndrome.
Marcia Childress - Associate Professor of Medical Education, University of Virginia School of Medicine
Discussion Questions
1. Is the book mainly about George, or Laura? How does George change, during the book? How does Laura?
2. What did you know about Down syndrome before reading the book? What did you learn?
3. The Shape of the Eye uses medical terminology, particularly in the first half of the book. Why do you think this is?
4. The Shape of the Eye opens in a doctor’s office, and has numerous encounters in hospitals and elsewhere. Some of these are successful, and some less so. In your personal experience, when is medicine most effective, and when it is not? What are the characteristics of good communication between patient, doctor, and caregiver?
5. Are people with Down syndrome visible in your community? How would you describe your community’s attitude towards people with disabilities in general? Have you seen significant change in those attitudes?
6. The author refers to Down syndrome as “Laura’s way of being human.” Do you see Down syndrome this way, or as a medical condition primarily, or as something else altogether?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Mom and Me and Mom
Maya Angelou, 2013
Random House
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400066117
Summary
The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.
For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.
The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.
Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka— Margeurite Johnson
• Birth—April 04, 1928
• Where—St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• Education—High school in Atlanta and San Francisco
• Awards—Langston Hughes Award 1991; Grammy Award for
Spoken Word Recording, 1993 and 1995; Quill Award, 2006
• Currently—Winston-Salem, North Carolina
An author whose series of autobiographies is as admired for its lyricism as its politics, Maya Angelou is a writer who’s done it all. Angelou's poetry and prose—and her refusal to shy away from writing about the difficult times in her past—have made her an inspiration to her readers. (From the publisher.)
More
As a chronicler of her own story and the larger civil rights movement in which she took part, Maya Angelou is remarkable in equal measure for her lyrical gifts as well as her distinct sense of justice, both politically and personally.
Angelou was among the first, if not the first, to create a literary franchise based on autobiographical writings. In the series’ six titles—beginning with the classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and followed by Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, and Mom and Me and Mom—Angelou tells her story in language both no-nonsense and intensely spiritual.
Angelou’s facility with language, both on paper and as a suede-voiced speaker, have made her a populist poet. Her 1995 poem “Phenomenal Woman” is still passed along the Web among women as inspiration:
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That's me.
Her 1993 poem “On the Pulse of the Morning,” written for Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration, was later released as a Grammy-winning album.
Angelou often cites other writers (from Kenzaburo Oe to James Baldwin) both in text and name. But as often as not, her major mentors were not writers—she had been set to work with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. before each was assassinated, stories she recounts in A Song Flung Up to Heaven.
Given her rollercoaster existence—from poverty in Arkansas to journalism in Egypt and Ghana and ultimately, to her destiny as a successful writer and professor in the States—it’s no surprise that Angelou hasn’t limited herself to one or two genres. Angelou has also written for stage and screen, acted, and directed. She is the rare author from whom inspiration can be derived both from her approach to life as from her talent in writing about it. Reading her books is like taking counsel from your wisest, favorite aunt.
Extras
• Angelou was nominated for an Emmy for her performance as Nyo Boto in the 1977 miniseries Roots. She has also appeared in films such as How to Make an American Quilt and Poetic Justice, and she directed 1998’s Down in the Delta.
• Angelou speaks six languages, including West African Fanti.
• She taught modern dance at the Rome Opera House and the Hambina Theatre in Tel Aviv.
• Before she became famous as a writer, Maya Angelou was a singer. Miss Calypso is a CD of her singing calypso songs. (From Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
Angelou is smart and gifted enough to write for any audience she pleases. Clearly, she chooses to write for readers as open, playful and straightforward as herself…Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou's trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou's forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.
Valerie Sayers - Washington Post
Mesmerizing.... Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.
Essence
[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies.... [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.
Elle
Written with her customary eloquence, Angelou’s latest focuses on her relationship with her mother, the fierce, beautiful, charismatic, and determined Vivian Baxter—dubbed “Lady” by the 13-year-old Angelou.... There are difficult times...as well as triumphs, such as Angelou’s job as the first African-American female streetcar conductor, obtained thanks to Baxter’s encouragement. The book follows in the episodic style of Angelou’s earlier volumes of autobiography, pulling the reader along effortlessly. The lessons and the love presented here will speak to those trying to make their way in the world. B&w photos
Publishers Weekly
[A] distinct addition to Angelou's autobiographical writings. When Angelou was three her parents separated and sent both Maya and her brother to live with their grandmother. When Angelou was reunited with her mother ten years later, the initial relationship was difficult, though eventually they formed a strong bond. Here Angelou writes about critical episodes from her life while giving attention to her mother's positive influence at various crossroads. —Stacy Russo, Santa Ana Coll. Lib., CA
Library Journal
In this loving recollection of a complicated relationship, Angelou for the first time details the mother-daughter journey to reconciliation and unwavering connection and support.... Angelou vividly portrays a spirited woman.... [A] remarkable and deeply revealing chronicle of love and healing.
Booklist
Angelou has given us the opportunity to read much of her life, but here she unveils her relationship with her mother for the first time. True to her style, the writing cuts to the chase with compression and simplicity, and there in the background is a calypso smoothness, flurries and showers of musicality between the moments of wickedness. And wickedness abounds, for Angelou had a knack for picking bad men. But the pivot of the book is her mother.... "[S]he was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother….She stands between the known and the unknown." Strung through the narrative are intense episodes in Angelou's personal progress.... A tightly strung, finely tuned memoir about life with her mother.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
1. Maya says her mother was "irrestible." What makes her so? How would you describe Vivian Baxter? What did you admire most about her? And what did you not admire?
2. How do you view Vivian's decision to send her children to live with their father at such a young age? Why did it take her so long, even after the divorce, to call her children back to her?
3. Talk about Maya's resentment of Vivian...and the halting path toward reconciliation that she followed. The Washington Post reviewer believes this process contains some of the best writing in the book. Do you agree...or not?
4. Discuss Maya's brother Bailey and his easier path into his mother's orbit. What can explain his later struggles with drugs?
5. What are some of the episodes in Maya's life that particularly shocked you?
6. Talk about the society in which Maya grew up and the degree to which it was pervaded with racism. How have we changed...or have we?
7. Reviewers talk about the tone of optimism in this book—the fact that Angelou's prose lacks bitterness. Do you agree? If so, why do you suppose that is? How has she been able to overcome a resentment that many of us would carry with us for years?
8. Mom and Me and Mom is the seventh book in Maya Angelou's remarkable autobiographical series, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Have you read any other of the books in this series...or any of her books of poetry? If so, how does this book compare with the others? Can you identify elements of poetic writing in the prose style of this work?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again
Crystal McVea (with Alex Tresniowski), 2013
Howard Books
245 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476735856
Summary
The remarkable story of a woman, plagued with guilt and skepticism, dramatically changed by the nine minutes she spent in heaven.
God let me see me through His eyes. And in that instant I knew that God had always loved me, through all of those dark and difficult years when I doubted His existence, through every crisis and every heartbreak that made me turn away from Him more. I knew, in that instant, that His love was endless and boundless, and that if He loved me so much, how could I not love myself?
For most of her life, Crystal McVea was a skeptic whose history of abuse and bad choices made her feel beyond the reach of God—who questioned if God was even real. She had all but given up hope. Then came December 10, 2009—and the moment that changed everything.
For nine minutes that night, Crystal went into full respiratory arrest. She was unconscious and unable to breathe on her own, unaware of the crisis happening around her as the hospital staff rushed to save her life. Crystal doesn’t remember the trauma or losing consciousness; she just remembers waking up in heaven, next to God.
Waking Up in Heaven invites readers to witness the relentless pursuit of God in a life that was broken and seemingly beyond hope, an awe-inspiring account of love, forgiveness, and redemption, and the healing power of God’s presence. (From the publisher.)
Read interview with Crystal
Author Bios
• Crystal Leigh McVea was born in southwest Oklahoma and still lives there today. She is a schoolteacher and has four lovely children. Crystal and her husband Virgil, a US Army veteran, are devout Christians and active in their local church.
• Alex Tresniowski is a former human-interest writer at People and has written several books, most notably The Vendetta, which was purchased by Universal Studios and used as a basis for the movie Public Enemies. His most recent book, An Invisible Thread, has spent more than twenty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As of yet, there are no mainstream press reviews online. For helpful customer reviews see Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Discussion Questions
1. Waking Up in Heaven opens with a letter from Laura Schroff, author of An Invisible Thread. How does this letter help frame Crystal’s story? What do you think made Laura pay attention to Crystal’s message?
2. Revisit the moment when Crystal dies, beginning on page 10. What is your reaction to this scene? Are the details—the bright light, the warmth, the love—what you would expect? Why do you think Crystal chose to begin her story with her death, rather than with her troubled childhood?
3. Crystal describes the first person she met in heaven—herself: “Unlike on Earth, where I was plagued by doubts and fears, in heaven there was nothing but absolute certainty about who I was. . . . I was flooded with self-knowledge . . . revealing, for the first time ever, the real me.” Why do you think God reveals ourselves to us when we get to heaven? Do you think everyone on Earth is still waiting to meet himself or herself? What did Crystal learn about herself that surprised her? What do you imagine God might show you about yourself?
4. Crystal seems to have been followed by death for her entire life, beginning when her stepfather Hank “stood just inside [her] bedroom and aimed his gun at [her] bed.” What are other moments in the story when Crystal comes face-to-face with death? What is the significance of so many close encounters?
5. “I was the common denominator. The problem had to lie with me,” says Crystal, in reference to the abuse she endured from three different people during her childhood. Do you think Crystal’s gut reaction to blame herself is typical? Describe a time in your life where a pattern of encounters has made you feel responsible, even though the situation may have been out of your control.
6. An important theme in Crystal’s story is forgiveness: forgiveness of herself, of her parents, of her abusers. Why is forgiveness so important to Crystal? Why was Crystal only able to find forgiveness in her heart after dying and meeting God?
7. How does suffering shape the person Crystal is today? In what ways has she suffered physically, mentally, economically, spiritually? Have you had similar struggles in your life? Do you believe like Crystal that “suffering can bring us even closer to Him” and that “our very worst moments are precisely when God’s grace is most brightly revealed”? Why or why not?
8. Discuss Virgil. What role does he play in “saving” Crystal’s life? How would you characterize him? Do you see him as angel-like? Crystal says that Virgil brought stability to her life, but what else did he bring?
9. Crystal talks about her demonic events as tests from God to strengthen her faith. How would you describe these events?
10. What are the ways in which Crystal describes God making her feel “whole” (165), and why is this feeling so important?
11. What does Crystal see as her mission from God? What made her realize this mission? Who do you think you are called to be?
12. Crystal defines God’s message as the following: “God is real, and we are all worthy of His love and salvation because He finds us worthy.” Crystal understands God’s role as a parent who loves His children. Do you think of God as a parent figure? If you had to define God’s message to you, what would it be?
13. Do you think that Crystal’s story of dying and coming back to life is important for us to hear? In what ways? What does Waking Up in Heaven teach us about blind faith?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
An Interview with Helene Wecker |
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A: When I was working on my MFA at Columbia, I started writing a series of short stories that combined tales from my family and from my husband’s family. I’m Jewish and he’s Arab American, and so in that sense we come from two different (and, in many eyes, opposing) cultures. But I’ve always been struck by the similarities between our families, the way that certain themes echo between them. We’re both the children of immigrants, with all that entails. As a result my husband and I both grew up in suburban, picket-fence America—but with the intimate and sometimes uncomfortable burden of another place’s history, and the complications of living as a cultural minority, which affects our relationships with those we love and those we meet. Q: Your male jinni Ahmad arrives in turn of the century NYC’s Little Syria neighborhood (now Lower Manhattan) from inside of an old Syrian copper vase. How is your Jinni different or similar to those of legend? From the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and the TV show “I Dream of Jeannie,” we have some preconceived ideas about what a jinni is. When you were writing his character, what were you thinking about getting across to the reader? A: I started out on less certain footing with the Jinni than with the Golem, and it took me longer to figure him out. I didn’t realize until I started researching the jinn how much they are an everyday truth for many in the modern Middle East and the Muslim world, and I wanted to be respectful of that. But I also realized that a Western audience would be more familiar with the Thousand and One Nights and pop culture versions. In the end, I kept coming back to the idea of a creature created from fire, and how that might translate to his personality: impulsive, passionate, dazzling, dangerous. It struck me that such a creature would have a very hard time camouflaging himself in New York society. Whether consciously or not, I think I drew from Western fantasy as well, from elves and brownies and so on, which are sort of like the British and European cousins of the jinn: strong-willed, mischevious, and usually hidden. But one thing I was certain of, pretty much from the beginning, was that my jinni wouldn’t be granting any wishes! Q: You decided to give your golem and jinni free will and fairly strong-willed personalities, even though they are both bound to masters. How did you come to this decision, and what are the consequences? A: Funny enough, it was never really a decision. I think their strong personalities came about because they’re both bound and limited, and forced to live in a state that isn’t quite natural to either of them. I knew the interesting stuff would happen when they came up against those limitations. As for the consequences, it meant that they’re constantly arguing! Q: Besides the main characters, who else was the most fun to write? A: It’s hard to choose, but I think Saleh was my favorite supporting character to write. He was a huge surprise to me. I was researching Little Syria, and I found an article in the New-York Daily Tribune written in 1892. One of the illustrations was of a man in a turban, sitting in front of a wooden churn. The caption was “An Ice-Cream Seller.” I thought, who is that guy? And suddenly I knew. I wrote his backstory in one long, frenzied session. It felt like an unlooked-for gift. I grew very attached to Saleh – he’s such a great curmudgeon. Q: In writing and researching this novel, what most surprised you? A: One thing that surprised me quite a bit, and shouldn’t have, was the diversity of Jewish religion and philosophy at the turn of the century. It’s far too easy to think of past peoples as monolithic, and the past as “a simpler time,” when of course it was anything but. I hadn’t realized the extent of the Socialist movement in the Jewish community, or the vehement variety of opinions on the budding Zionist movement. They probably tried to teach me all this at Sunday school, but I was too busy reading Dragonlance novels in the back. Q: What makes your novel relevant today? A: A good question, considering it’s set over a hundred years ago, and has two supernatural creatures for main characters. But over and over, my research told me that the concerns and dilemmas of 1900s-era New Yorkers would be very familiar to the modern reader. They worried about multiculturalism and globalism, the tensions between science and religion, between tradition and assimilation. It became clear to me that we have always been finding and losing our faiths; we have always struggled to defend or flaunt propriety, to follow or ignore the dictates of our hearts. * * * |