This is a beautiful, moving work of fiction that is primarily based on the life of the author Elizabeth Graver's grandmother, Rebecca Cohen Baruch Levy (born in 1902), and other family members. Graver incorporated family stories and photographs, but created a narrative that incorporates what she has conceived of their inner lives and intimate experiences.
The Cohens were Sephardic Jews who left Spain as a result of the Inquisition and settled in Constantinople, Turkey. For several hundred years, under the Ottomans, they prospered financially, living a refined upper class lifestyle, and practiced their religion. After World War I, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the development of modern Turkey (which was declared a republic in 1923), their fortunes declined, and the relatively secure position of Jews changed. The Cohens lost their money and business (partly due to Rebecca's father's poor business practices and gambling), and they eventually were forced to move away from what had become Istanbul, and resettle in Barcelona, Spain, living in much reduced circumstances.
The rise of Fascism and other right-wing movements in Spain leading to the Spanish Civil War made life dangerous for Jews. Rebecca, whose first marriage was a failure and who became a widow with two sons upon the death of her husband, traveled to Cuba to meet Sam, a widower, and potential second husband. Sam and Rebecca married and traveled to Queens, New York, where they joined his mother and disabled daughter. Her sons eventually joined them and they had children together.
The novel recounts all this in rich detail and we share in the author's description of how she imagines Rebecca's thoughts and feelings, through the following decades of her life with Sam, the tragedies of World War II, the loss of family members, and especially the challenge of caring for and encouraging Luna, Sam's daughter.
It is a remarkable story, painful in many places, but ultimately triumphant. Rebecca must have been a truly extraordinary person and a true "woman of valor".
This is the fifth of the eight novels I plan to read for the 2024 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and certainly one of my two favorites thus far. I hope to complete the final three by the mid-May deadline.
