Jennifer S. Brown’s New Novel of Prohibition

With its richly-layered world and perfectly-flawed protagonist, Jennifer S. Brown’s latest book, The Whisper Sister (Lake Union Publishing, 2024), is a historical coming-of-age story that, a century after its events, feels relatable and timeless.

It follows the life of Minnie, a Jewish immigrant growing up in 1920s New York City in the midst of Prohibition. From arriving at Ellis Island, to taking over her father’s speakeasy, Minnie pushes through the misogyny, antisemitism and class struggles of her time. Like Modern Girls, Brown’s first book which tackled abortion, this novel also explores the reality of a so-called “morality law” and the dangerous underworld it created.

Brown spoke with Lilith about the struggle for identity, the resurgence of antisemitism, and the fascinating historical gems she uncovered in her research. (The interview has been lightly edited.)

HN: Your book explores the dark reality of coming-of-age in New York City during Prohibition. What was it that drew you to that time period? What themes did you hope to uncover?

JB: As a third-generation American, I’m extremely curious about what my own great grandparents may have gone through as immigrants. Most of my ancestors arrived in the U.S. in the early 1900s. Images of the 1920s in popular culture today feature flappers, cocktails, and fabulous parties. Would my own relatives have been a part of all of that? It’s clear from family stories that indeed there was little glamor in their lives, and if they were involved, it wasn’t on the ritzy side of things.

As far as themes, the question of identity is one I grapple with. In The Whisper Sister, Minnie is uncertain of her place as a Jew and as an American. I think this feeling of displacement is universal and timeless, and I wanted to delve into how people decide where they belong.  

In researching your novel, did you find anything that surprised you? What fascinated you the most?

So many things about that time period surprised me. That the government was so complicit in killing people by adding more and more toxic additives to alcohol (one senator called it “legalized murder”). That the most minor of mistakes could cause someone to be denied citizenship. That the games of crap kids played on the street were controlled by the underworld. 

What fascinated me, though, were the quieter facts. I love digging into minutiae: how much average salaries were, what foods Jewish immigrants ate, how much money was needed to survive. I spent hours paging through old newspapers, magazines, and books. As a mother, my favorite was reading the 1920 Healthy Babies: A Volume Devoted to the Health of the Expectant Mother and the Care and Welfare of the Child in order to learn how Minnie’s sisters would have been taken care of. The ideas at the time seem so ridiculous now: babies are deaf at birth; that newborns must have their positions changed while they sleep so you should move them once an hour; early babyhood is the time to prevent prominent ears; potty training should start at two months. I could really go on and on about this book. It was easy to fall down rabbit holes. Too many times I realized I was reading for fun and not research.

Minnie feels like a very modern female character—driven, independent, business-minded. Yet the story still feels true to its time. How did you create that balance?

The rights of women were certainly not on the forefront of Minnie’s mind. Yet inequality infused her life. She sees the unfairness of her brother being allowed the kind of job that her father says, “isn’t for girls.” She experiences fury at being sexually harassed in the office and being told it’s her fault, she should wear more modest clothes. She bristles that she isn’t permitted to do the same things in Jewish tradition as her brother. While she was powerless against these things, she still managed to claim equality through necessity and her actions. She had much to prove. Minnie showed she could support a family, could run a bar, could be a force to be reckoned with. She wasn’t living an ideal; she was simply living her life.  

We recently marked a year since the October 7^th massacre of Israeli men, women, and children. Since the attack, there’s been a dramatic rise in antisemitism around the world and here in the U.S. How has your experience of being a Jew—and a Jewish writer—changed in the last year?

I’ve always been very “out” with my Jewishness—I don’t think you can talk with me for more than five minutes without learning I’m Jewish—but the past year has made me both more outspoken as well as more cautious. Both my children are in college and I fear what is happening on their campus. My son traveled in Eastern Europe over the summer, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling him to tuck his Magen David necklace into his shirt. When I walk into shul and see all the new security, my stomach clenches. For the first time I feel fear attending synagogue.

Interestingly, though, it hasn’t affected me as a writer. My books are about Jewish immigrants, so the people reading them, I would assume, are more open to the Jewish experience. It’s a self-selecting audience.  

Your characters experience several instances of antisemitism, including one very traumatic event at the beginning of the book. Does today’s reality remind you of the world you recreated for your novel? 

Honestly, today’s reality feels so much worse to me. Antisemitism now is more malicious. The beatings people took in the 1920s have become shootings in synagogues. I would never say one type of antisemitism is worse than another—all of it is horrific—but I feel like in the 1920s the prejudice was blatant. You knew where you stood and had communities you could turn to for support. Today it’s harder to parse. What exactly does that person mean when he’s joking about Jewish space lasers causing wildfires? Perhaps the amount of antisemitism is the same as it was in the 1920s and it’s simply that social media is amplifying it. Hard to say.

There’s a struggle in your book between the need to assimilate, to thrive in a new country, while still holding onto and honoring one’s Judaism. How did that guide Minnie’s journey? 

That struggle is Minnie’s greatest challenge. She’s unsure how to balance the different pieces of her life. She experiences that dichotomy with her parents: Her father yearns to move up in the world, to make money and provide for his family even if that means he can’t observe Shabbat. Her mother holds on to Jewish traditions, not learning English because everyone she knows speaks Yiddish. Her father is taking charge in the American world; her mother is enmeshed in community and faith. Minnie navigates the two sides: she never feels quite American but she also doesn’t feel truly Jewish. The decisions she makes are based on her being either Jewish or American. Not both. This is what she must reconcile over the course of the novel.