Bashie Lisker: arc, villainy, and the inevitability of frum guilt

Bashie Lisker calls Lie of the Land, the Family First serial she just completed, a thriller; she set out to write a suspenseful story for frum women who grew up reading Yair Weinstock and want the female and 2025 version. I think it’s a mystery; the plot is centered around the central question of “Who is the body in Rivi and Gabe’s father’s plot?”, but simultaneously draws us into nuanced and relatable characters and grapples with deep and thought-provoking themes. Regardless of its genre, Lie of the Land was unique and intriguing from its startling first chapter. Those who missed it can now follow along with the story through a Mishpacha-produced audiobook/podcast, which includes the author’s thoughts along with each chapter.

Bashie Lisker is a Mishpacha editor and contributor. In addition to Lie of the Land, she’s published Chol Hamoed Trip Gone Wrong and Attack of the Sukkah Bandits. She’s also published middle-grade novels about frum children for a secular audience under the pen name Mari Lowe, including The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman (review here) and an upcoming fantasy, Beinoni.

Lie of the Land was extremely unique, for so many reasons. It’s so multifaceted, and I’m curious which aspect of it you started out with. What was the brief or proposal before you started writing?

I came to them with, “There's a body in a plot they're going to bury the father in.” And then a lot of the interpersonal stuff came later on. I wanted to come in with a strong premise because it was the third premise I had sent in. One of them got dropped because it wasn't the right time for it, one of them was really similar to another pitch they had gotten super recently, and then this was kind of the third.

The story features one extremely unique character after another, which adds color and spice to the story. Where did you dream them up from? And were these quirks integral to the story itself?

There were certain things I knew from the start. I knew I wanted Rivi to be a professional, that was going to be a huge part of her character. I wanted Gabe to have an unusual job that would somehow bring us back to this kind of searching. I wanted someone who’d be a little bit more of an expert in there. And with Penina, I just really needed a computer girl—or guy. Ultimately, it was going to be a pretty woman-centric story, so I wanted it to be Penina. And then the rest of it, when you develop a story, it just comes in turn.

After just a few chapters, we find out that Avigdor Cohen is not who we thought he was, and he quickly turns into a villain. We’re used to villians in Nazis, Arabs, and mean bosses, definitely not frum villains! And while we’ve seen frum character grapple with bad traits, theft seems like black and white villainy. Were you cognizant of how new this is to frum literature?

I remember when I first mentioned it, I was like, Can we do this? There was some back and forth, but ultimately we agreed that he's already lying, he's taking someone's identity. Is stealing so much worse than these things? But I think it was unprecedented. At the same time, the genre needed it. You can't have every character be a paragon when you want to write a story that grapples with moral issues. The father is not necessarily a good person. He's done bad things. And I think part of the story is them coming to terms with the fact that their father, who has done terrible things, is also someone they loved, who loved them, who had done good things for them too.

In the end, we see Rivi finding the good in her father, in his attempts to protect her, etc. Given the obvious things he did wrong, was Rivi coming to terms with her past? Or is this a shift you’d like the reader to adapt, a way of lessening the villainy?

It was definitely for the characters, not the readers. I'm sorry! But I think it had to be. Rivi’s very black and white. It takes her a long time to even see the good in herself. As she grows and changes and comes to terms with herself, she also starts to come to terms with the things about her father that weren't all bad. She doesn't have to utterly reject someone.

When the story started with Rivi’s uncertainty about her balance between her career and motherhood, the reader knows where this will probably go. And as a reader myself, I assumed she’d have the “a mother belongs at home” epiphany almost up to the end - because that’s what frum literature does. Why did you let Rivi keep her career-focused life, and her atypical marriage dynamic?

Well, if her husband wants to be a Rebbi and they still want to live in their nice big mansion and have lots of money, Rivi has to be a lawyer! But I also felt like we have this weird thing in frum literature where we pretend that the Mommy is at home all day. But the reality is that Mommies are not at home all day. I have pretty typical jobs: I'm a writer, teacher, and editor. I'm doing all the regular frum stuff. But I'm not always available. I'm not always there. I think there’s this myth of the woman who can do it all: have a job, be home in time for the kids after school, make dinner every night, never have a breakdown, always be smiley and happy and perfect, and get them out to school in the morning again. I kind of wanted to challenge that.

There are a lot of women who find a lot of fulfillment in their jobs. There's a lot of guilt there also. Penina is almost a counterpoint. She’s also a professional woman, and she and Rivi bond over that. But at the same time, she makes the decision right near the end when she’s offered a promotion, and she says no. There’s no wrong way to be a frum woman.

Rivi and Suri’s aggressive arguments bring a very real, but unspoken, dynamic in real life - the stay-at-home vs career mom, each looking down on and judging each other. Can you talk about this dynamic between them and their lifestyle choices?

I feel it's almost unfair that Suri's a villain because she’s living this lifestyle. But I don't feel like she's a villain, honestly. I totally see her perspective. I feel like it's valid. They both feel guilty in different ways. They’re both very intimidated by each other. They're strong women who go into attack mode because of that. I think they're very similar in a lot of ways, I think they could be best friends—but they probably won’t ever be. It comes out in this resentment of each other, but it’s really hiding this feeling of—“Is she doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Am I the one who's totally off on this?” As Rivi comes to terms with the fact that there is no right way to be a mother, she becomes calmer, more able to bend. It's really not about Suri at all. It's about her.

Rivi and Gabe find themselves unmoored for years as they are missing a family to anchor themselves to. This is so unique to the frum world’s family-oriented social world. Can you talk about this theme which was so prevalent, of how much our families give us a place in the world, and what happens when that’s missing.

I think there are many, many people who don't fit into that perfect frum conception of the nuclear family. There are definitely programs and people who consider it. But there’s still going to be “Avos Ubanim.” There's still going to be Mother’s Day gifts. There's always this assumption that everyone has the nuclear family. And many people don’t. It becomes very isolating, very alienating—and sometimes pushes people away. So you know, in some cases you have Rivi, who goes to the extreme, she’s fully pushing away her inner child. And then Gabe, who's just like I'm out of here. I don't connect.

In a way they did have something in common. You would expect that when Rivi finally got a family with her in-laws, she would lean into that. But she absolutely did not.

She's just not good at people. I think she would have liked to, But she didn't do it right. She was very defensive, and very afraid, and she sabotaged herself.

There’s one character completely absent from the story - Rivi and Gabe’s mother. In your imagination, who is she? What’s her story?

She mostly exists in her absence. Originally, both Moish and Avigdor were going to be married, and Avigdor’s wife was going to be the villain. But that was too far, we can't have so many Jewish villains. But I find that what I know about her is what you know about her, and I think that's how it should be. When there are these tiny little Easter eggs - a single memory of her, a picture of her, her name in a book - I'm also like, wow, we got a little bit of her.

I had an entire timeline starting from Moish’s birth up until the present day. In that, he quits completely. Like it didn't come up in the story, but he quits, and he gets married. He says, I'm doing this, I'm raising my kids. And then after his wife passes away, he's kind of unmoored. And at that point he comes back and does this one big heist because he just doesn't know what to do with himself.

Perhaps more than specific plot points, what makes a story a mystery, or any other given genre, is the mood created through the writing, description, and setting. What mood were you aiming for? And how did you get at that?

It really depends on the chapter. There were chapters where I wanted everyone to be a bit nervous when they were reading it. Like one chapter where Penina's in the house, and we know there’s been someone in the house, and my favorite one when Rivi’s on the plane knowing that the guy is on the plane with her. In those, I was very focused on suspense. But then there was one chapter where I had an image of Rivi falling down a snowy mountain and laughing and crying. I was getting teary-eyed when I wrote things like that.

The best advice I ever got in terms of book writing is something someone told me many years ago: every chapter has to have a story. I think that's something that you see much more in serials. You can't have a chapter where nothing really happens because you need time to pass. You can't have a chapter where everyone's just hanging around. There should ideally be an emotional and a plot arc, but at the very least one or the other. You can't just have a bunch of characters sitting around schmoozing.

Character and emotion are a writer’s candy - but what about plot? Lie of the Land, like so many of your short stories, feels like a drama, like something’s happening and we’re along for the ride of your imagination. But that can easily tip into the sphere of guns and blood thrillers with no depth. How much plot is the right amount? And what techniques do you use to ensure you’re keeping to the right amount?

I feel like it's very instinctive. I don't have much patience for things that are solely plot, and I don't have much patience for things that are solely character. So that's just how I like to write, and where I like to be. I like things moving, but at the same time I want to feel things. And if things are moving too much, you lose the feelings. And if you're feeling things too much, nothing's moving. So it's just about finding that balance within each chapter.

Every now and then a chapter didn't do that. There's one chapter I really don't like, but it was necessary, where Penina is just sitting on the computer the entire chapter doing research, and then at the end there's a phone conversation that's vaguely emotional. We're doing an audiobook podcast, and when we were going over that chapter before we discussed it, I was like, I don't want to talk about this chapter.

I think the word count constraints of a serial are a really good exercise for writers, because it forces this balance. I'm writing a book right now, and the chapters range from nine hundred to two thousand words, and it's so lazy. Really, I should get them all to that tight length, because I think that it trains us to be better writers, tighter writers, to really put in what's necessary and not add things that are self-indulgent. Because you want to be a little bit indulgent of your characters, but not too much. Your characters do not need to just schmooze for minutes about something that you think is really interesting.

The introduction of any romance lets the reader assume it will wrap up neatly in a bow, but I appreciated how subtle that storyline was, and always played a backstage to the mystery or emotional action taking place. But at the end of the day, we’re left with an open-ended ending that leaves readers guessing, or drawing their own conclusions. Why did you choose to close the story with some threads still unraveled?

If you're writing a romance, the expectation is that there's a happy ending. But when it's other kinds of fiction, you have the leeway to say, this is not what the story is about. I always intended it to end this way: maybe someday, not today. In a story that takes place over the course of three, four months, I could not see something like their relationship resolving that quickly. There's a lot of growth that still needs to happen. I think it's just more mature that way. We're writing about adults, you know.

What was the feedback to Lie of the Land like? How does its success change the way you think about or approach your own writing, including what you’re capable of, what people like…? And does it change how Family First thinks about its fiction?

I was really happy because I felt like they took a chance on me on this, and I wasn't sure how it would go. People mostly write in when they're feeling cranky, so early on a lot of the letters were cranky letters. The story started near the end of the school year, and no one even mentioned it to me at work for the first few weeks. But when I came back after the summer, everyone was talking to me about it. And I said, okay, we hooked people.

There were funny responses, too. A lot of people got very caught up in the idea of Kohen, not Kohen, and the ramifications. My husband was obsessed with this. Every day he’d be like, wait, but did you think about this element? Someone was like, they have to change that kesuba right away. And I was like, no, I spoke to a rav about this. I sat down with a rav at the beginning, because I had so many questions, there were so many little Halachic things. If we believe that's the person's name and that's the assumption at the time, and it's the name they're known as, then the kesuba is not an immediate, urgent thing to change. Their marriage is not invalid. We got a couple of "this is too scary." Some of the "too scary"s were like, but I'm hooked, so now I'm going to have to read it the whole time. But baruch Hashem, it's been super positive. People are really excited about it, there's a lot of investment. It's been a really fun ride.

I know Family First is open to the idea of another thriller now. There’s much more faith there. It's a great team, and they're really open to anything as long as you explain it and it makes sense. I've done some other weird stuff, and they've taken it. There are some I really can't write, though, like historical fiction. I think it's just so much research, and you still don't feel comfortable in the time period. That's a little bit scary to me. I enjoy reading it though!

Your latest short story, Driven Off Course, played on themes similar to Lie of the Land, where childhood personalities and dynamics stay within an adult. Can you tell me how that story came to be?

I was with Adina Lover and I was like, I think I want to write something about how we're stuck in the past, and how you're always a child with your family. And then slowly the rest came out. I had to ask my husband at one point, what can destroy a car without someone noticing? And then it sort of unfolded there. I often just start with a premise and then the writing just kind of happens instinctively. I know that's not helpful.

What’s coming next for you?

Mishpacha is putting out a podcast of Lie of the Land, read by Naomi Rubner. That’s partially why they took the chapters down from the website. That’s going to be out very soon, and is available for anyone. I'm starting to develop another thriller serial, I have a plot coming together and hope to write in the summer. I also write frum-centric middle-grade novels for the secular world as Mari Lowe, and I have one coming out this summer, a fantasy novel titled Beinoni. I’m also working on an adult novel for the secular world about a woman who bakes challah and speaks to the dead.