Rochel Istrin: character, imagination, and the familiar arc of history
Return from Captivity is Rochel Istrin's sequel to The Captives which presents a suspenseful and vivid adventure of a family scattered across pre-Civil War America. In the past, Rochel has brought a colorful resonance to familiar periods of history and spun them in a new light. Now, in her ongoing "Captives" trilogy, she ventures into the barren territory of the American West. The dynamic and intriguing characters bring life and playfulness to the meticulously researched setting while exploring complex themes like connection, individuality, teshuva, and the illogical survival of the Jewish people.
In addition to The Captives (Fall 2022) and the newly released Return from Captivity, Rochel Istrin is the author of Hidden, Stepping Stones, and Searching.
I grew up in Independence, Missouri. When I started writing, history was my framework while I focused on the drama between the characters. Growing up, I loved literature and learning about different times and places, I just didn't realize that I liked history. Gradually as I wrote more, I became more entranced with all the things I could learn, and history started to come alive like it never did before.
The Captives opens in 1852, and quickly bypasses the New York/Philadelphia German immigrant experience and brings us a brand new perspective on this period. What led you to the specific setting?
You’re supposed to write about what you know, and I grew up in Missouri. That's the history of the place. Some people are still fighting the Civil War there! On school trips, we would go to forts where there used to be Indian-fighting soldiers. We stood on the bluff of the Missouri River or the Mississippi and imagined Indian warriors in their canoes and the explorers. Actually, I was born in St. Joseph, which is the home of the Pony Express.
My grandparents lived in St. Joseph. We went every week, and every summer I spent a few weeks with my grandparents. My grandmother's house appears in several of my novels. Most of Hidden, the novel I wrote about the Nazi doctor who hid Jewish children, takes place in my grandmother's house. It was so real to me. I could hear the creaking of the wooden stairs going up, feel the steam in the bathroom with white tiles and a bathtub raised on claw legs. Even the backyard, the trees, the garden, everything that I wrote about was something that I actually experienced at my grandmother’s house.
When I submitted my first manuscript to Artscroll, it started in the shtetl and later went to New York. I told the story of their mother, Faigy, and her relationship with Bernie/Boruch’l. But Mimi Zakon, the chief editor at Artscroll said to me, “Been there, done that.” Nobody is interested anymore. We know the story of a shtetl. We know the story of yidden that came to America and threw away the mitzvos. My characters felt like family, so it meant something to me. But she said readers wouldn't like it.
I liked the way that you incorporated those past events and people, though. Even though it wasn't on the page, you just described what had happened beforehand so we understand where these people come from.
I was cheating. I couldn't give them up. But the original manuscript was never printed. Maybe someday, if this trilogy is successful, I'll go back and rewrite the first one. Perhaps readers that read all three might be interested in that background story. I originally planned to write the serial from the shtetl until the end of the century, about 1890. And I actually wanted to write about three generations. But I kind of fell in love with my characters and couldn’t leave them.
St. Joseph sounds like a really fascinating city that was at the crossroads of so much of history and witness to so much change. Was there anything that surprised you when you started digging into the details of the period?
Oh, yes. I'm learning lots of interesting things. I really never knew any Indians, so I had to go into that. It was hashgacha pratis that I chose Cherokee Indians because they were much less savage than other tribes. The women dressed modestly, they covered themselves, not like the other tribes, and they were more intellectual. As I learned about the Cherokee, I saw that if Jewish children had to be kidnapped, the Cherokee were the right ones. Reading about the Trail of Tears was fascinating because as Jews, we relate to that, how they were forced to leave their ancestral homes, how many died on the way, and how it scarred them for generations.
Throughout the story, the plot is spread between the East, South, and West, giving us a wide view of the time. Can you describe the general Jewish climate in this period, and what were the biggest differences between the Jewish communities in each of these locations?
The East was very crowded and was divided between people trying to continue their life from the shtetl and their children who wanted to assimilate and take advantage of America’s freedom. We lost so many people, Boruch Hashem their grandchildren are coming back. I don’t know very much about the East because I never lived there. My great-grandparents, who I remember, came to America in the 1890s through Galveston, a completely different way. So I didn't want to write about something that I had no connection to.
There were not many Jewish communities in the West, but Jews are everywhere. I have a brother living in Anchorage, Alaska. He says the Jews in Alaska call themselves The Frozen Chosen. Back then they were everywhere, too, usually as peddlers because that was an occupation where they could keep Shabbos, they were their own bosses. They left their families in the cities back East. During the Gold Rush, the Jews made fortunes selling supplies to the miners or running stores in the cities. There were quite a few Jewish businesses in St. Joseph back then. Our people have a connection internationally, and it gives an economic advantage when you're running a business.
In the South, there were also Jews, and I'm sorry to say that the ones that I found did not continue keeping tradition. We can't judge them because it was a different world. But in general Southern Jews invested their energies in becoming accepted and being considered equals in Southern Society.
One thing that makes Return from the Captives stand out immediately is the colorful characters you introduce. So many authors talk about how their characters have a mind of their own, and just do what they want. Which of your characters surprised you the most?
Naftali continues to surprise me. Mina Rose was supposed to be a helpless southern belle type, but she turned out much differently. I certainly didn’t expect her to marry Naftali! I was concentrating more on her father, this wealthy banker who married a non-Jewish woman, and how that would affect him, his daughter, and the community. Mina Rose stole the show because of her desperate unhappiness. My characters kind of introduce themselves to me as we go along. There are writers that plan everything out and have it outlined, I'm not one of them. I'm what they call a pantser, which means I write by the seat of my pants. When I sit down at the keyboard, I have only the vaguest idea of what direction the story will take me. It’s less efficient but more fun!
It’s funny because after I gave Artscroll the first manuscript of The Captives (after she refused the earlier one), Mimi Zakon said to me, This is boring. Your characters are so one-dimensional, it's as if each one has a sign on him. “I'm the Bais Yaakov girl,” “I'm the hero”. That’s because the plot and the action were leading the story. Thanks to her critique, I went back and rewrote the whole thing, and allowed them to bloom into dynamic and believable people.
Return to Captivity explores so many different themes, one of which are the nuances of individualism vs fitting in to the world we live in. Yehudis, Sheldon, Naftali, Mina Rose, and Toiby each face the question of change and conformity differently. Conforming with a new culture, a father’s expectations, a new role… Are these all one question?
I ensure that each of my characters is an individual by using the Enneagram. So I can tell you what each one will do under almost any circumstances according to who he is.
Take Beryl: he's a loyal SIX and full of conflicts. That's why he wants to marry Toiby, and he doesn't want to marry Toiby. He wants to find his sister, but he wants to go back. SIXs are always torn between two things. Naftali is more of a SEVEN, an action, let's-have-fun person. He's not deep, he's not worried, but he has such a good heart and wants to love and be loved. Toiby is probably a FOUR, feeling everyone's pain and also feeling their happiness. A four has a lot of trouble with knowing where their limits are; they tend to merge with people around them because of their natural empathy. Mina Rose is more of a THREE. She wants to be the very best, she wants to be beautiful, she wants to be successful, she wants her husband to be successful, and she intends to see that he will be. Her father is most likely an EIGHT, a domineering, controlling person that expects people to be afraid when he comes into a room, and enjoys that. Bernie's also a different kind of EIGHT, ready to cheat and lie to get what he wants. As soon as he says something, he believes it just because he said it. And poor Shelly, he wants everybody to love him. He's a TWO. He tries so hard, always giving with no thought for himself.
At the close of Return to Captivity, Touch the Sky realizes he genuinely has nowhere to go, and reflects on his people’s dying out. This sentiment, and the humanization of the Cherokees in general, touch on some fraught ideas in American politics today. I appreciated the way you framed it there, as a comparison to the Jewish people’s immortality. Can you elaborate on that, and how this perspective fits into the broader world history?
I think that is a tremendously important theme that I want my readers to see. We can have the same experiences as the non-Jewish people, but ours are different because when we're connected to Torah, mitzvos, and Hashem.
On the other hand, little children here in Israel bring home Parsha pictures of Esav and he looks like a monkey or a gorilla or worse. All their pictures of the goyim are distorted and ugly. I grew up in public school and lived with mostly nice people. I want to humanize them, I want them to be people that we can understand. They don’t have a Yiddishe neshama. But I want it to come through that every man was created and is loved by Hashem. Touch the Sky is not going to convert, and he won’t even keep the seven mitzvos of Noach. I could have just sent him off to the reservation, but I kept him because he has an important role in the next book. And having him parallel, you can compare their lives to see how the hashkafa of a yid is so special, strong, and safe.
How is writing the second or third novel in a series harder than writing a standalone novel, and how is it easier?
The hardest thing for me is to start writing. And the next hardest thing is to stop. I start writing and it takes on a life of its own, and then it just goes and goes and goes and goes. And then Mimi Zakon says to me, “You can't have so many pages, people can't carry a book that heavy!” So I have to find some place to stop it. But the endings are kind of artificial because there's no such thing as an ending in life.
Some writers look at each of their books as building on the next. Some try to keep each as different as possible. Hidden, a historical novel that personalizes the Holocaust in a unique way, is still a much loved book which multiple people have told me is their favorite novel ever. How do you think writing Hidden, with its more typical setting but such vibrant characters, informed the writing you do today?
Well, let me go backwards. As a lonely kid, I was a voracious reader. But no book ever finished for me because as soon as I finished it, I was always imagining it continuing. I would tell myself stories. As soon as I learned about the Holocaust, I began to imagine where I would hide, and I told myself the story of Hidden. And the same with all of my books, actually. I imagined: if I was kidnapped by Indians, what would my life be like? As I had the great privilege to become more and more frum, I began to see more challenges and I wanted to address them. I didn't know that I was going to write them, it was just how I played. And I would also take different roles and look at it from a different perspective. Like in Hidden, one time I would be Fraydl, one time I would be Karl, and one time would be one of the boys. I lived it from the beginning to the end, again and again and again.
What have you read recently that you can recommend?
My favorite book of all time is called The Man Who Never Slept: The Challenges and Triumphs of Reb Mordechai Pegrimansky. I can read it a thousand times. It's an amazing book, it’s so inspiring. I've been 50 years in Israel now. When I first came, I was more or less adopted by Rav Meir Miller in Bat Yam. He was the bachur in the book that was meshamesh Rav Pegrimansky. He always spoke of the Rav with such awe; it's impossible to imagine that he lived among us.
A recent book that I've read once and could read again: Even If I’m Not, by Devoiry Kreiman. It was loaned to me by a friend who recommended it. I did not expect to like it, I hate shallow tear-jerkers. But this is an excellent book that made me think, made me feel, made me cry and made me laugh. And in the last few days, I’ve been re-reading The Morning Star, by Meir Uri Gottesman. He is such an amazing writer. You read it and you feel yourself back in the times of the Mikdash. You feel that you're living it.
You left a fair amount of uncertainty at the end of Return from Captivity, and we’re looking forward to book #3. Other than just somehow bringing all the characters together for a grand reunion, what bigger themes are still left to be explored?
Oh, the Civil War. I’m not doing Civil War battles, but I already have been learning something very interesting about the supplies. Horses have to eat a certain amount and if they're riding from battle to battle, the horses don't have time to eat. I learned about supply caravans 65 miles long just with food for the horses, food for the soldiers. It was life and death work.
Obviously, Sheldon is going to join the Confederates, and Beryl is going to fight for the Union. And how does Naftali feel when they want to draft him? Can they make him wear the blue uniform of the cavalry that killed the people that he grew up with? And how will the women manage the farm without him? And what about the children? Because there will be children. And Touch the Sky…
In the south, in Louisiana, the war was only two years long. I just learned about that when I was researching. At first, Louisiana sent all their militia volunteers to the East, to fight in Georgia and South Carolina. With no one left to protect Louisiana, the Union rolled right in. And what happened to all the slaves? Some ran away, but some stayed because there wasn’t anywhere to run to. And I’ll write a little about the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves reach freedom. I only know a vague idea, but that's where it's going. There's a lot of action coming. I don’t know the ending yet!