A Modern Orthodox Jewish love story in Los Angeles: Meet Jessica Elisheva Emerson 2nd equal
Jessica Elisheva Emerson
2nd place equal with “from the verb: to know”
Jessica Elisheva Emerson won second place equal with her utterly absorbing novel from the verb: to know. It's a work of accessible literary fiction about two flawed characters in worlds that aren’t often explored: an orthodox Jewish homemaker and a Chicanx art professor in Los Angeles. Her opening pages made us absolutely have to read on and convinced us she has a great story to tell, as our judge Sebastian Faulks describes here (see 5min40” on).
Synopsis:
Rina Kirsch is an exhausted young mother and orthodox Jew in the Pico-Robertson shtetl of Los Angeles who has lost her faith, and Will Ochoa is a mid-40s community college art teacher living in the bohemian Topanga Canyon with a young autistic child and a rotting marriage. After Rina's husband coerces her into a night of orthodox wife swapping (“It preserves marriages”), she seeks solace first in the arms of a Chasidic Rabbi and then in painting, an old hobby. Rina and Will are both embroiled in identity crises, and when their paths cross an ardent love affair brings their own needs into sharp contrast with what the world demands of them. from the verb: to know is a character-driven upmarket novel set in communities most readers will never have encountered; a page-turner of a Valentine to Los Angeles, with literary sensibilities.
What was your inspiration for this novel?
I’m interested in people who seem invisible to most of the world, and both Rina and Will—my main characters—are or feel invisible. I’m also drawn to stories with a strong sense of place and culture. And exploring women’s sexuality is a constant in my work…you know when around middle school and you start hearing how many times a day boys think about sex, with the implication that girls don’t? In some ways everything I write is an outcrop of how appalled I am with the cultural approach to women’s sexuality, and that’s one anecdotal example of my early outrage.
Specifically, in 2005 I moved into a Modern Orthodox neighborhood, heard an amazing story about some bedroom goings-on, talked to a few more people on deep background, and eventually a story started to form.
How long have you been writing?
I wanted to be an author according to my kindergarten diary. I wrote a (backburnered) novel in my mid-twenties, got my MFA just as I turned 30, and spent about a decade working on this book as I raised my three children. In the writing world, it seems to me it’s either “40 Under 40” lists of wunderkinds, or “how does it feel to be [so old] over 41 and shopping your first book?” Folks have different priorities, and one of mine was raising humans who—hopefully each in their own small or large ways—will help decrease the suffering of others and our planet in the future.
What were you doing when you heard you'd won?
It’s a bittersweet story…the news could not have come at a better time. We were home quarantining for COVID, taking it especially seriously because I’m immunocompromised and happened to have pneumonia at that moment, and I’d just begun what turned out to be a miscarriage. I was on the way to the doctor where I would find out that I needed to have a D&C to clear out the failed pregnancy, and that because of the pandemic and my pneumonia it would have to be in a hospital’s OR instead of a doctor’s office.
It’s important to normalize pregnancy loss, so I want to share honestly. That call was a salve in my week, my month, my season, and to my soul, and it came at a moment when one type of creation was challenging for me, yet another type of creation was in bloom. It meant so much to me—and to my family—to receive not only that news but the support that came along with the First Pages Prize.
We’re so sorry for your loss, Jessica. Thank you for speaking about this, we hope it’s of comfort to others.
What's your writing process?
A lot of my work first unfolds in my head while I take long walks or work in the garden. I wrote a tremendous amount of this book in three-day stints in motels in a small town called Cambria on California’s central coast (which makes a small appearance in the book). That allowed me quiet, long stretches of uninterrupted time, and the wonder of the natural world. Some of the editing unfolded that way, too, and the rest of the writing and editing happened between cooking, cleaning, breastfeeding, reading, loving my husband and children, and my career as the director of an organization working in the progressive Jewish world.
Tell us some of your favorite books?
Some favorite books and authors are: Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi), Sabrina & Corina (Kali Fajardo-Anstine), The History of Love (Nicole Krauss), Plainsong (Kent Haruf), The Wolves of Willoughby Chase trilogy (the Wolves Chronicles) (Joan Aiken), Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead), My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok), The Awakening (Kate Chopin), My Antonia (Willa Cather), Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aimee Bender, Elena Ferrante.
Also, I haven’t finished it yet, but holy moly, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half is so, so good.
What are your next steps for from the verb: to know?
I’m currently looking for an agent. The full manuscript is out to a handful of wonderful agents, but of course you never know what the right fit will be until you find it. It’s still a really active search, and I’m so excited to find a collaborative partner for my writing career. With Unorthodox and Shtisel streaming hits and the Modern Orthodox Jewish world virtually unknown in American culture and media, I hope—despite the pandemic—that it’s a good time to take this book to potential agents. I’m also at work on my next book, about a woman who decides she needs to change everything about her life after gastric bypass surgery, and moves down to a small ranch along the border of Mexico and Arizona and becomes embroiled in the border crisis.
What else we should know about you and your writing?
I’m obsessed with pie and it appears in everything I write. Like most people of my generation, I’ve had lots of careers: I’ve worked in an investment brokerage firm, as a journalist, in business and legal affairs at a major motion picture production company, writing for an auction house where I sat under one of Lee Harvey Oswald’s caskets, in municipal government, as a school administrator, and in my current role as the Director of a network of progressive Jewish organizations and rabbis (I think of myself now as rabbi adjacent).
I am from Arizona and my husband is from Oklahoma and we’ve both lived in Los Angeles a long time, so we have strong connections to the idea of the frontier and the American West, with all the bad and good that go with it. When I said I was going to college to study print journalism my parents said to me “but what about your painting?” which tells you everything you need to know about how expansively and beautifully I was loved and raised up by them. My husband and I got married in The Last Bookstore, which was exactly perfect.
It’s wonderful to get to know you more in this Q&A, Jessica. Cannot wait to see from the verb: to know on bookshelves!
Bio:
Jessica Elisheva Emerson’s work has been published in many journals and her debut novel from the verb: to know was also a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Obsessed with stories, pie and working towards a better world, she Iives in L.A. with her husband and three children. Find her at elishevaemerson.com or on social @ElishevaEm.