Yona Zeldis McDonough
What if you had a magical way to escape the horrible future? And what if you still wanted to stay where and when you were living, in spite of that?
What if you had a magical way to escape the horrible future? And what if you still wanted to stay where and when you were living, in spite of that?
Elizabeth Weitzman's latest book, RENEGADE WOMEN, illustrates and examines key women who invigorated the TV and film industry.
Author Miryam Sivan tells Lilith's Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about her latest novel, which portrays a young woman who recently made aliyah and seeks to tell others' stories.
Lilith’s managing editor talks about her poignant books for children.
National Jewish Book Award Winner Lauren Belfer on her most recent novel, “And After the Fire.”
Lilith’s fiction editor converses with Susan Dworkin about her new book, “The Garden Lady,” as well as Ms. Magazine and being confused with Andrea Dworkin.
Is there anything Barbie can’t be or do?
The fictional Goldbaums are similarly powerful and almost unimaginably wealthy, but unlike most of the aristocrats in Europe at the time their wealth is earned. They are more like the American industrialists or new money, and were considered by many as gauche and bourgeois, viewed with even more intense suspicion by the establishment because of their Jewishness. To me, that makes the Goldbaums interesting – to be both singularly powerful, intricately involved in international affairs and needed by governments and emperors, and yet still be vulnerable and isolated.
Like any novelist, I did what my characters and my story led me to. The place, Siena, which I’d been to 10 years before I started writing the book, drew me in because of the way it exists in both past and present. Being there blurs the boundaries of time. Siena’s people live their centuries-old traditions with profound seriousness, and a deep emotional connection. And in Siena a mystery resides about what happened during the plague of 1348, an unsolved mystery that I uncovered as I began to learn more about Siena’s history. So my story took me there, and then.
For some of my characters the attraction to India is, I think, in many ways similar to what pulls people to Israel and maybe ultimately disappoints them: a search for spirituality, connection, inner peace—often misguided or deluded.