Poland, 1906: on a cold spring night, in the small Jewish cemetery of Zokof, Friedl Alterman is wakened from death. On the ground above her crouches Itzik Leiber, a reclusive, unbelieving fourteen-year-old whose fatal mistake has spurred the town's angry residents to violence. The childless Friedl rises to guide him to safety - only to find she cannot go back to her grave. Now Friedl is trapped in that thin world between life and death, her brash decision binding her forever to Itzik and his family: she is fated to be forever restless, and he, forever haunted by the ghosts of his past. "Years later, after Itzik himself has gone to his grave, his son, Nathan, knows nothing of his bitter father's childhood. When he begrudgingly goes to Poland on business, Nathan decides on a whim to visit his ancestral town. There, in Zokof, he meets the mysterious Rafael, the town's last remaining Jew, who promises to pass on all the things Itzik had failed to teach his son - about Zokof, about his faith, and about himself." "And yet, like the generation before him, Nathan keeps what he learns hidden inside himself. With the family legacy in danger of being lost, Friedl's restless spirit guides Itzik's precocious granddaughter, Ellen, on a journey of her own to Zokof, where only Friedl can help Ellen unlock the mysteries of her family's past - and only Ellen can help Friedl break her agonizing enslavement."--BOOK JACKET.
It may come as a surprise to those familiar with the themes of my book that I come from a family of atheists. Both my grandfathers were men who had turned their backs on traditional religion, which they regarded as a form of bad science. My mother, daughter of a musician, student of Isadora Duncan dance, and a sculptor, claimed that art was all the spiritual sustenance the family needed. But I always suspected my family's fervent belief in mankind's possibilities had religious roots. Growing up in Great Neck, New York, I used to slip out to church services with my Christian friends and to synagogue with my Jewish friends, curious about what I was missing.
At eighteen, traveling alone in Europe, I came upon a rabbi with a long white beard standing in a doorway in Paris. I thought, how quaint, until I saw the plaque above him which read: On this spot, the Gestapo killed two brothers. It made me realize my religion was not something about which I could afford to be so removed and ignorant, that had I been born in another time and place, the fate of those brothers might have been mine.
Upon returning home, I embarked upon the study of Jewish history and theology that has run like a thread through my life. At New York University I majored in Religion and Philosophy and after graduating, spent a year studying International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. What amazed me most about that year was how deeply moved I was by Israel's beauty, by its people, and its history. The experience brought me to a job at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles.
I moved on to Loyola Law School and worked as a lawyer for about five years. But even First Amendment cases relating to the separation of church and state could not overcome my deep boredom with the practice of law. I have left it to my husband to soldier on in that career.
From childhood, the two means of expression which had always been most powerful for me were modern dance, including choreography, and writing. I have found that skills, once acquired, have a way of resurfacing for new uses. The bad poetry and angst-ridden daily journals of my youth helped me to develop a sensibility about writing. Two years after the birth of me first daughter I decided to take a writing class at UCLA. The process felt familiar and fiction reminded me of dance ' choreography with words.
A few years and another baby later, I had the opportunity to travel to Poland with me in-laws and visited their home town of Zwolen (a town I fictionalized as Zokof). There, I began to see the shape of a novel that would become A Day of Small Beginnings.
Today, much to the utter amazement of my parents, I am President of the Santa Monica Synagogue in California. My mother, the atheist sculptor, is still asking (albeit with a smile), where did I go wrong?
