Ethel Rosenberg Reimagined in “The Hours Count”

YZM: How did you go about researching the novel?

JC: I read most of the non-fiction that’s been written about the Rosenbergs and their case, as well as many of the prison letters they wrote to each other. I also read a lot about the time period, what it was like to be a mother in the early 1950s, what it was like to live during this part of the Cold War in New York City as a Communist (and as a Jew). I made a giant timeline on the wall of my office before I started writing, detailing every true historical thing I wanted to include between the years 1947 and 1953, and I wrote the fiction around these events.

YZM: Was it hard to craft a story using real characters like the Rosenbergs alongside fictional ones, like Millie Stein and her husband? 

JC: Yes and no. It was hard in the sense that I wanted to try to stick to the historical timeline as accurately as I could.  But using fictional characters also gave me some freedom to tell the story the way I wanted to. Millie Stein is all my creation, so I could create her life and world and thoughts and actions. I felt this gave me a freedom as a writer that I wouldn’t have had had I stuck only to historical figures.

YZM: Do you feel that there was an anti-Semitic agenda in the conviction of the Rosenbergs?

JC:  Do I think it was the only factor? No. But I do wonder if the Rosenbergs hadn’t been Jewish if their story might’ve ended differently.

YZM: You also wrote a novel about Anne Frank’s sister Margot; do you feel historical novels are having a moment right now? 

JC: I hope so! I didn’t set out to write either novel with that in mind, but I hope readers are as interested in reading historical novels as I am in writing them.  

YZM: What’s next for you? 

JC: I’m just finishing up a draft of my next novel. It’s about a stamp engraver in Austria in 1939 who is working with the Resistance, and a woman in L.A. in 1989 who discovers one of his stamps and unravels his secret love story. So, another historical novel! It has been really interesting to explore two time periods/places in one novel this time. And it has also been really fun to revisit 1989 (a year I still vividly remember) as a “historical” time.  

The Hours Count was reviewed in Lilith’s Fall 2015 issue. Read the review here.