Angela Himsel, A RIVER COULD BE A TREE
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:12]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Please sign up for my newsletter at ziviowens.com
[0:17]for updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.
[0:21]Today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland Reader's Retreat, which is happening
[0:25]April 29th to March 3rd in Iceland. Who doesn't want to go to Iceland?
[0:30]While you're there, you'll get small group lectures and talks by renowned authors
[0:33]learning about the rich literary heritage of this Nordic book loving nation,
[0:37]Adam Gopnik is the special guest this year, and he will be doing a small seminar on memoir
[0:43]between all these intimate book discussions. You get to have literary theme tours of the countryside,
[0:48]hear from other Icelandic writers and discover some really cool artifacts and
[0:53]raked-of-ex museums. This sounds so fun, and I'm hoping I can somehow manage to get there,
[0:58]but you should check it out at icelandreadersretreat.com. That's icelandreadersretreat.com.
[1:05]The price is $1,600, but that includes so much everything for basically four days of your life.
[1:11]So check it out at the Iceland Reader's Retreat. Thank you so much.
[1:14]Angela Hymsel is the author of memoir A River Could Be a Tree. Angela has contributed to the
[1:19]New York Times the Jewish Week, The Forward, and Lilith, among other publications.
[1:23]She received the American Jewish Press Association Award for her column,
[1:26]Andatefka, on zik.net. Angela has a BA from Indiana University,
[1:31]which included two years at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
[1:34]and an MFA from the City College of New York.
[1:36]Welcome, Angela. Thanks for coming on mom's dinner time to read books.
[1:39]Thanks so much for having me. Of course.
[1:41]So can you please tell us, Nair's What A River Could Be a Tree Is About?
[1:45]It's a memoir, and it's about growing up on the 7th of 11 kids,
[1:49]and I grew up in southern Indiana, in what some people might consider a cult.
[1:53]Let's call it an alternative kind of religion. It's called the World Wide Church of God,
[1:58]and we believe that the world was coming to an end like any second,
[2:01]and we were going to be spirited away to Petra in Jordan when the world came to an end.
[2:06]So I grew up that way, and then ultimately through many twists and turns,
[2:12]I ultimately converted to Judaism. So it's about that particular religious journey,
[2:17]but it's also, I would hope that it's also about the possibility of change,
[2:22]in any sense of the word.
[2:24]You've gone through so much, this like major transformation.
[2:27]Yeah. When did you decide this was a book?
[2:30]You know, I didn't, to be honest, I love fiction, and I was always writing fiction,
[2:35]and I really did not, was not that interested in writing about myself, to be quite honest,
[2:40]that I was writing some essays that had been published in the Jewish week, and I had a
[2:45]column on Anja Tefka, and a lot of the essays drew from my background, and I was sort of juxtaposing
[2:52]them. Anja Tefka comes from, you know, it was a play on Anatefka, because my name is Angela,
[2:58]and Anatefka about this little tiny village, Jewish village, and I felt like I lived in this little
[3:04]tiny village on the Upper West Side of New York City, which was very different than the rural
[3:09]place that I inhabited as a child. And so I called out Anja Tefka, and I kind of juxtaposed
[3:16]my world today to the world. I kind of left behind, even though I didn't really leave it behind,
[3:21]I wouldn't say I left it behind, it certainly carried it with me as we all too. So I was writing
[3:26]these essays, and a friend of mine said, you know, you should write a memoir. And I said,
[3:30]eh, I don't really feel like it, and I'm not interested in myself that much. And then I just thought,
[3:36]you know what? I have all these essays, maybe I'll just link them all together and call it a memoir.
[3:41]I was so lazy as a writer, and I started to do that, and it was clearly not working. And I needed
[3:48]the beginning, the middle and the end, and I needed an arc, and I needed everything that you need
[3:52]in fiction, obviously, but in nonfiction. And then I started to get serious about it and really
[3:58]wanted to make it into not a lot of separate stories and vignettes, but in a complete kind of book.
[4:08]And so that's when I really started to work on it as a memoir. I really did just back into it,
[4:14]actually. How long did it take to write? Oh, the truth. Yeah, the truth. 14 years.
[4:21]Wow. But I wasn't working on it the whole time because I was going back to fiction and my
[4:25]big love. And I was also raising kids and just writing essays and that sort of thing.
[4:31]So I would write it, and I would think, oh, this is it. I got it. I think this is it.
[4:36]Sent it out to agents. It wasn't it. Didn't get an agent. Then I revised it, sent it out,
[4:43]and I did that. And that really is the process for me of being a writer. Other people,
[4:48]undoubtedly are better writers and faster writers. And don't start thinking that they've got it
[4:55]before they've got it. So it took me a while really to get it to this place.
[5:01]Well, you have so much information in there. I mean, it's not just your story. I feel like you
[5:05]woven a lot of religious history and like, I don't know. I feel like you must have done some research.
[5:10]I love research. That's the idea. I'd like to kind of seek out any one of your any history.
[5:15]I'm not so secretly. I would like to be a librarian or yes, a historian or a teacher because I
[5:24]really like that. I like to be taught things. I like to learn new things. When I read a book,
[5:29]whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I love to learn new things. And I like it when they
[5:34]make it interesting for me to learn it. So I don't feel like I'm in history 101.
[5:39]So definitely that was, it became more imperative to me because I certainly realized while I was
[5:45]writing the book something that I understood but not so well because sometimes you just don't
[5:50]understand these things. I certainly understood that we are up all apart of a much bigger world
[5:56]and our own little world may seem incredibly important. But I needed to really explore the world
[6:02]that my parents came from. I needed to explore the world of immigration because immigration
[6:06]plays such an important role in American history for absolutely everybody. So I really needed
[6:11]to kind of go into that. And I also needed to go into, in my case, the Catholic and Lutheran
[6:19]divide really because my mom was Catholic and my dad was Lutheran and then when they came together,
[6:24]it was like a very big chanda as they would say. And yet it was a very big shame. So I really
[6:31]needed to explore that. I would spend entirely too much time on Martin Luther. Let me just tell you
[6:38]I know a lot more about Martin Luther. I have like flashbacks for like fifth grade worksheets
[6:42]or it's like pencil script showing in like who was Martin Luther. Yeah. By the way, not that this
[6:47]is any of my business but it's not too late for you to be a history teacher or anything you want.
[6:52]I mean, my kids, I have kids in four schools. They would love to have a fabulous author
[6:58]historian teacher. So just saying if nothing could. Okay. So back to your book. Yes, you are the
[7:03]seventh of 11 children. I am. What was that like? Chaotic. I mean, you have four kids. Let's just
[7:10]triple them. I know. I know. That's what I'm doing in my head. I know. I know. I think my mother did
[7:17]probably. I think that it's not until you have your own kids to be honest that you realize what
[7:25]huge undertaking it is to have one child. You know, like one child seems like a huge undertaking
[7:32]when you're a new parent. And then when you have more than that, it's like, wow, how did they do
[7:37]that? Did they drink? They didn't. They actually didn't drink. They didn't smoke weed,
[7:42]but a lot of parents are doing apparently. But no, they didn't. But it wasn't easy.
[7:48]Did you say you're going to say also that they had like no help? They had no help. Obviously,
[7:52]they had no money. They had no money. How would you even get everybody? How would you even
[7:56]transport everybody anywhere on top of each other's laps? Because this is before, you know,
[8:02]seat belts were actually a necessity. So I don't. I never had a bet to myself. I always
[8:08]had a bet with a couple of siblings. It just depended on the rotating list of who was moving out
[8:13]and that sort of thing. But in fairness, my oldest sister is eight years older than me. My youngest
[8:19]sister is 14 years younger than me. So there were not 11 kids living at home at the same time.
[8:26]But I guess there were always like eight or nine. It's hard for me to remember. But yeah,
[8:31]we had three bedrooms. So we were always on top of each other. And there was a lot of fighting
[8:38]who stole what, who decided to wear somebody else's underwear because their underwear wasn't
[8:42]clean. Like, the usual siblings, but times a lot. And did you, were you in charge of doing like
[8:48]all your own chores? Like did you have to do? Yes. Everybody had their own chores. We were always
[8:53]mopping with a mop or with a rag on the floor. And yeah, the house was a mess. Yeah,
[8:59]laundry. We actually didn't have a washing machine in a dryer for a long time. So we had to go
[9:04]up to the trailer court, which is not the book. We had to go up to the trailer court and where
[9:09]they had, you know, public laundromat. And we had to do laundry on a Sunday afternoon. And there
[9:14]were always about 10 loads of laundry. So we were just hanging out there for the afternoon.
[9:18]But I will say, I think that one of the benefits of it, let's just say, is that those were in some
[9:25]sense when I look back absolutely great afternoons that hang out with my sisters. We would laugh
[9:30]and joke and drink tab from the, hello tab from the machines. And the other thing I guess is that,
[9:37]you know, you certainly don't take things for granted. And I think that of all of my siblings,
[9:42]in general, I would say they're all pretty easy going. It's like, you know, you don't just get
[9:48]all head up about something because it's like, you know, it could be worse. It's always comes down to that,
[9:54]you know, it was easy since we're on the Jewish theme with your book and everything.
[9:58]You know, that, that folks.
[10:00]It looks like a topic of many children's books,
[10:01]how the rabbi comes and the guy has all these kids.
[10:05]He doesn't know what to do.
[10:05]And he says, we'll get a cow and see what he's going to get
[10:08]like two roosters and then they get all the animals
[10:10]and then he takes the house away and he's like,
[10:12]oh, it's peaceful.
[10:13]It's like, exactly, exactly.
[10:15]It's all about perspective.
[10:16]What you used to, and that sort of thing,
[10:19]having said that, I'm very happy
[10:20]whenever I don't have to share a bet with anybody.
[10:24]Yeah.
[10:25]And you decided to have three kids.
[10:26]I did.
[10:27]I have three kids.
[10:28]And I honestly, after having kids,
[10:30]I mean, I had so much more renewed respect for my parents.
[10:34]I mean, really, no help worked really hard
[10:38]and had to feed these kids and clothe them
[10:41]and all of that.
[10:42]I'm having a party every day.
[10:43]Oh, not necessarily a fun party.
[10:45]Not really a fun party.
[10:45]Not a fun party.
[10:46]You got it.
[10:47]Yeah.
[10:48]I'm amazed at one bathroom, by the way,
[10:51]just in case you're wondering.
[10:52]I was wondering.
[10:53]Yeah, one bathroom, lots of loud knocking.
[10:55]You've been in there for at least a half an hour.
[10:58]So I'm very fast in the bathroom now
[11:01]because never had time there.
[11:03]Oh, yeah.
[11:05]There's a personal.
[11:06]Was there enough food?
[11:07]Oh, do you all have enough food?
[11:07]You know, we did have enough to eat,
[11:09]but I will say one of the things today,
[11:12]and I don't mean to make this a political thing.
[11:14]But when people talk about how, you know,
[11:17]there should be no government handouts
[11:19]as somebody who grew up on the government handouts,
[11:22]I say, why would you punish the kids?
[11:25]Really?
[11:25]Because we had free lunches at school, you know?
[11:28]And there should be free lunches for kids
[11:30]who don't have food to eat, in my opinion.
[11:33]In fact, I think there should be free lunches
[11:34]for everybody at school, because you shouldn't differentiate
[11:36]between kids, because then that also puts them
[11:38]in an embarrassing position.
[11:40]But we joke still today about all of the Thanksgiving's
[11:44]in which we had beans and cornbread.
[11:46]That was our Thanksgiving.
[11:47]Having said that, I like beans and cornbread.
[11:49]So it was OK.
[11:51]But yeah, my mom really made things stretch
[11:54]and because my grandparents and my aunts and uncles
[11:57]and so on lived on farms, we also had chickens.
[12:01]So we did, and a big garden.
[12:03]So we did, you know, have our own food and we canned food
[12:07]and that sort of thing.
[12:09]But there was always food, but it was, you know,
[12:13]peanut butter sandwiches and beans and cornbread
[12:15]and that sort of thing.
[12:17]And again, it makes you just sort of be OK
[12:20]with whatever, in many respects, I think.
[12:23]Did you ever feel, I know there's a scene in your book
[12:25]when you were about eight years old and your family moved,
[12:28]they thought the end of the world was coming,
[12:29]the head to move houses up and left.
[12:32]Correct.
[12:32]Did you feel at the time like, oh, my family's
[12:35]a little different than everyone around me
[12:36]or were you a part of a whole community
[12:38]where everyone was doing things like that?
[12:39]No, we were the only ones in our county who are in this church,
[12:43]the worldwide church of God.
[12:44]We were the only ones.
[12:45]My mother's family was Catholic.
[12:47]My father's family was through and they were not happy
[12:50]that we had joined this church.
[12:51]But there's nothing like being a kid
[12:54]and feeling that you're better than everybody else
[12:57]secretly.
[12:58]So I think I secretly thought like we had the truth
[13:01]and they didn't.
[13:02]But you could feel many things at the same time.
[13:05]You know, it's multiplicity of feelings here.
[13:08]So I definitely felt different than everybody else.
[13:11]Sometimes that was awkward, but sometimes I really just
[13:13]felt superior to be honest because we were chosen
[13:16]and they weren't felt bad about it, that they weren't chosen.
[13:19]But you know, we were, they weren't.
[13:22]And my parents and obviously as an eight-year-old,
[13:24]you buy into anything that your parents tell you.
[13:27]And if your parents tell you that Jesus was returning soon,
[13:30]like he was supposed to return in 1975,
[13:33]your parents tell you this and you believe them.
[13:35]So I didn't have any sense of,
[13:39]I mean, we had a much better house
[13:40]that we left behind than the farmhouse
[13:42]that we moved into, which had a coal burning heat.
[13:47]We didn't have, like, we had to go down
[13:49]in the middle of the night and throw on some wood
[13:51]and some coal, you know what I mean?
[13:53]So we definitely, we're living like it was the 1950s
[13:58]in a sense or 40s, maybe.
[13:59]1850s.
[14:00]No.
[14:01]You're a little lighter.
[14:02]You're like little hats on the prairie.
[14:03]Kind of, right?
[14:04]Well, we had a furnace and it had took coal and wood, yeah.
[14:09]And when you were growing up,
[14:10]I'm so sorry, your sister passed away.
[14:12]She did.
[14:13]Can you tell me a little more?
[14:14]Are you okay talking about that?
[14:15]I wrote about it.
[14:16]It was one of the hardest things to write about, obviously,
[14:18]but it was such a, a seminal moment in my life.
[14:21]And it really, in many respects, was a turning point.
[14:24]Although I don't know that I realized it at the time,
[14:26]but I was eight years old and my sister was diagnosed
[14:30]with something, a heart illness of some sort.
[14:32]She was nine.
[14:34]And she was 15 months older than me.
[14:37]So we were very close.
[14:38]And so she suddenly, you know, was bedridden
[14:42]and she couldn't get out of bed.
[14:44]She did have a heart ailment.
[14:45]I believe my parents took her to the local doctor,
[14:48]but I think that, but I know that it was pretty much
[14:52]forbidden in the church to go to medical doctors,
[14:55]because you were supposed to have enough faith
[14:57]that God would heal you.
[14:58]And if you didn't have the faith, that was even worse.
[15:01]So if you didn't have faith,
[15:03]you weren't going to get into the kingdom,
[15:05]then the kingdom come.
[15:06]So you certainly wanted to have faith
[15:09]that God would heal you.
[15:11]So when I was researching the book,
[15:14]I did talk to my parents a little bit about it,
[15:16]but it was just really hard to have that conversation
[15:19]as to what exactly happened to her
[15:21]and could she have been saved?
[15:23]Had she had better medical care or any medical care?
[15:27]Because I don't believe she had any.
[15:29]Having said that, it was 1973.
[15:32]Heart surgery was really just being pioneered at the time.
[15:36]I don't think, I think open heart surgery
[15:38]had just, I was researching this.
[15:40]Over heart surgery had just begun, I believe.
[15:42]So it's impossible to know if she'd had better care,
[15:46]if she'd had antibiotics.
[15:47]It could have just been a case of antibiotics.
[15:49]I really don't know.
[15:51]So it was a really, really hard time
[15:54]to be 11 years old and your sister dies
[15:57]and she's not coming back.
[15:58]And it's the first time you deal with mortality,
[16:02]it really does slap you in the face.
[16:05]It really does, no matter what your age.
[16:07]And it certainly does when you're 11
[16:08]and you realize, wow, she's really not coming back.
[16:12]And I guess we didn't have enough faith.
[16:14]And so there is also that sense of self blame,
[16:18]whether it's yourselves as a family
[16:21]or your individual self, that if this had happened,
[16:26]then that would have been taken care of.
[16:28]If I'd had more faith than she might not have died.
[16:31]So I do think that when death happens in inexplicable ways,
[16:36]the people who survive are left with a sense,
[16:39]not just of loss, but of what if, you know?
[16:43]So it definitely took me a long time to process that,
[16:46]especially given that I was 15 months younger than her.
[16:49]So yeah, I'm sorry.
[16:51]Thank you, thank you.
[16:53]So you had this upbringing.
[16:54]Yes.
[16:55]And then you decide when you're in college that,
[16:58]well, first you realize you're gifted,
[17:00]your guidance counselor, but realizes you're like,
[17:03]amazingly brilliant and you don't know about it.
[17:05]Yes, I was smarter than the others.
[17:07]That's pretty much it.
[17:09]Well, don't downplay it.
[17:10]But anyway, so you end up going to college
[17:12]or like the first one to go, is that true?
[17:14]Or do you better?
[17:14]The older brother had gone, but not,
[17:16]but the first girl, yes, the first girl to go.
[17:18]And while you're there, you find a brochure about Israel
[17:22]and you decide you wanna go, right?
[17:24]And then your entire life changes.
[17:26]Correct, again.
[17:27]Right.
[17:28]Where was this brochure?
[17:29]What did it look like?
[17:30]I wanna start reading like magical brochures.
[17:32]I remember what happened before that I will tell you is,
[17:36]I had come home for the weekend on to church
[17:39]with my parents.
[17:40]We observed Sabbath on Saturdays, not on Sundays.
[17:44]So I went to church with my parents
[17:46]and the minister got up there and pretty much just launched in
[17:50]and said that Satan had gotten hold of the church
[17:53]and that it was because of women wearing makeup
[17:56]that Jesus couldn't return.
[17:57]And I like makeup.
[17:58]I like it a lot.
[17:59]And so I really, that was hard for me.
[18:04]But I really believed, again,
[18:06]you go back to this kind of,
[18:07]it's almost like a magical realism.
[18:08]Like if this happened, then this would happen.
[18:11]So if I got the Holy Spirit,
[18:13]if I somehow could get that bolt of lightning,
[18:16]then I could get it.
[18:17]And so I actually went to this office of overseas studies
[18:21]and I was gonna go to Germany for the year.
[18:24]But then I saw this other brochure.
[18:25]And it looks so sunny and bright compared to Germany
[18:28]which is a little dark.
[18:30]And so it was like, I think it was a picture
[18:32]of the Dome of the Rock, which is gorgeous.
[18:34]and in Jerusalem.
[18:36]And it looks so happy and inviting
[18:39]and all of the words to me,
[18:42]they were just like porn, like Judea and desert.
[18:45]Ooh, you know, like, you know, Bethlehem, Nazareth.
[18:50]So I was all excited about the possibility
[18:54]of being in the Holy Land.
[18:56]And the Holy in the sense that this is exactly
[18:58]where all of the events had taken place in.
[19:00]I think that for a lot of people,
[19:01]there was a sense that if you're in that physical location,
[19:05]whatever that physical location is,
[19:07]then you will be closer to the events that occurred there.
[19:10]So I felt like being there would just give me some
[19:15]kind of faith that I was lacking.
[19:17]And I thought that would be fun, to be honest.
[19:20]I just thought it'd be fun.
[19:21]So I just decided to go.
[19:23]I was really struck by, okay,
[19:25]so you're, I'm sitting here with that obviously,
[19:27]you have long blonde hair and the lies
[19:29]in your tall and you have German descent.
[19:31]Yes, yourself.
[19:31]Correct.
[19:32]So when you went to Israel, people were not having it
[19:36]in a way, they caught what they were calling you.
[19:38]Slutty and ceiling, you know,
[19:39]like all sorts of inappropriate things at the time.
[19:41]Exactly. Awful.
[19:43]And then you went to Germany
[19:44]where you looked like everybody else.
[19:46]Correct.
[19:46]So you went from feeling like completely out of place
[19:48]to completely in place.
[19:49]And I just like, I don't know.
[19:51]Somehow the juxtaposition of those two experiences,
[19:54]when you're the same person,
[19:56]but I don't know.
[19:57]It just like had some shoot identity.
[19:59]And I don't know.
[19:59]Yeah.
[20:00]You felt about it.
[20:01]You know, it's funny because growing up in southern Indiana, where everybody was white,
[20:05]everybody seriously, everybody was white, everybody looked like me.
[20:09]I mean, more or less, there were a few variations, obviously, but honestly, if you had
[20:14]dark brown hair, you were considered quite exotic, at that time, it's not that way
[20:20]today.
[20:21]Obviously, it's a much bigger world that we live in, but at that time it really was settled
[20:26]by German Americans, really.
[20:28]Swiss were still considered a little outsider.
[20:31]So going to Israel, where I never thought about how I looked, because I looked like everybody
[20:37]else.
[20:38]So to suddenly have that pointed out to me was kind of shocking, and I think that it really
[20:44]did, by the way, make me so much more aware of discrimination on the basis of looks, and it
[20:51]also made me aware of being welcoming to people who look different, or people who have
[20:59]disabilities, or just anybody in general who looks as if they don't belong.
[21:04]And I'd never had that feeling before of not belonging physically.
[21:08]I didn't feel like I belonged necessarily, spiritually or emotionally, but I didn't feel
[21:13]like I didn't belong physically.
[21:15]I belonged very much physically, where to my, you know, my town.
[21:20]So being out of place physically was definitely an eye opener, and it made me a lot more
[21:27]sympathetic to minorities, because I was suddenly a minority, and it was a shocking thing
[21:31]to be a minority.
[21:32]It never occurred to me that I could ever be a minority, you know.
[21:36]So I mean, it was a good, it was certainly a good lesson for me, a life lesson of how
[21:41]you treat the stranger amongst you.
[21:43]And I will say, though, most people were really nice to me.
[21:46]It's not like this was, this wasn't, but it was pretty much every day.
[21:50]A lot of Russian Jews have now immigrated to Israel, and I just got back from Israel
[21:54]actually last week.
[21:55]They all think I'm Russian.
[21:56]It's so great.
[21:57]I'm like, great, good.
[21:58]They think I'm Russian now.
[22:00]So I don't think it's the same anymore.
[22:02]I think that it was really that particular time before there was this influx of Ethiopian
[22:07]Jews and Russian Jews and Jews from other countries.
[22:12]And so now you end up converting to Judaism, right?
[22:16]And I won't go into the many events along the way, I don't want to get everything away.
[22:20]Now that you're on a website, you have like, you know, scenes from the Y and all these
[22:26]things.
[22:27]And how do you make sense of your sort of religious journey and how you got here?
[22:32]Like now, do you feel like, yes, this is who you were always meant to be or like, what's
[22:37]your sense of what's your like, what do you tell yourself about the whole thing?
[22:40]You know, I really do feel this is exactly who I was intended to be.
[22:44]And even though in many ways, I think that I stumbled into Israel accidentally because
[22:50]I wasn't planning on going there, there was the brochure.
[22:53]If you want to be a little more mystical about it, you can say, as they would say,
[22:57]in Yiddish, it's been shared, it's meant to be.
[23:00]Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
[23:01]I don't really know, but I can only say that I'm happy with the choices.
[23:06]I've made.
[23:07]I'm happy that this is the way it's turned out.
[23:10]For me, this was the right path.
[23:12]For me, I don't, it's certainly not the right path for everybody, obviously.
[23:16]And not everybody who goes to Israel decides they're going to become Jewish.
[23:19]They remain Christian and that's okay too.
[23:22]Obviously, I went to Israel when I was 19.
[23:25]So when you go at that time, when you really are kind of impressionable, then I think
[23:30]if you're open to it, you can find all sorts of different paths that you would never
[23:37]have had an option for in Southern Indiana or on the Upper West Side of Manhattan or wherever
[23:42]you come from.
[23:43]And also being away from home is just such a liberating experience.
[23:47]It's like, no, but he's around.
[23:49]I can do what I want.
[23:50]Literally, it's halfway across the world.
[23:53]So I think all of those things combine to it, but yes, this is, I feel that my identity,
[23:59]enough in many respects, I'm still kind of, you know, the kid from Indiana, obviously.
[24:05]But in terms of faith, Judaism has definitely offered me a different sense of faith and a different
[24:10]sense of experience of God than I had before.
[24:14]Yeah.
[24:15]So what's coming next for you?
[24:17]I'm going back to my original love because I'm tired of talking about myself.
[24:21]And so I'm working on a novel and it's a historical novel and it's not about me, although
[24:26]I think that fiction always ends up being about you one way or the other, even when you
[24:30]try to avoid it.
[24:31]And it's about, I'll give you a little bit, it takes place in the time of King David,
[24:35]which is one of my favorite eras at Iron Age period.
[24:38]And again, I'm hopefully I will maybe educate people a little bit.
[24:42]I'm doing a ton of research again, which is a lot of fun.
[24:45]And I started off writing about Mihal who was King Saul's daughter and King David's wife.
[24:51]So she knew both of the first kingdoms of Israel well as the daughter and the wife that
[24:57]did not work out so well for her.
[24:58]So I'm going to be writing about King David and that era through other lenses, not just
[25:05]his lens.
[25:06]So cool.
[25:07]Yeah.
[25:08]What a great idea.
[25:09]Oh my gosh.
[25:10]Thanks.
[25:11]Good luck.
[25:12]I can't wait to read that.
[25:13]Thank you.
[25:14]Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors?
[25:15]Aspiring authors.
[25:16]Oh, I hope it doesn't take you 14 years.
[25:19]But if it does, it does.
[25:20]I think that one of the things I've heard many times from other writers is, you know,
[25:25]I don't know if I can write this.
[25:26]I don't know.
[25:27]One of my grandma read it.
[25:28]And it's like, you know what?
[25:29]Forget grandma.
[25:30]Because she's not going to read it.
[25:31]And you should only be so grateful that it gets published in the first place.
[25:35]So don't write the book thinking that it's going to be published and somebody's going
[25:39]to read it because am I not get published?
[25:42]So write it anyway.
[25:44]Read it despite everything.
[25:46]And if you get so lucky that the book is accepted to be published, you can change it
[25:51]then.
[25:52]There's always time to say, you know what?
[25:53]Forget it.
[25:54]I don't want that scene in there.
[25:55]That scene does not have to go in there.
[25:57]You can always change it later.
[25:58]But write what you want to write without anybody, not grandma, not anybody on your shoulder.
[26:03]And just write it because it's yours, you know?
[26:06]I love that.
[26:07]Yeah.
[26:08]Oh my gosh.
[26:09]All right.
[26:10]Well, thank you so much for coming.
[26:11]Thanks for having me.
[26:12]I appreciate it.
[26:13]Thank you.
[26:14]Thank you.
[26:15]Thank you.
[26:16]Thank you.
[26:17]Thank you.
[26:18]Thank you.
[26:19]Thank you.
[26:20]Thank you.
[26:21]Thank you.
[26:22]You've been listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books with Zippy Owens.
[26:24]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zippyowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[26:26]Thanks so much.
[26:27]Today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland readers retreat.
[26:30]Don't forget to check it out April 29th to May 3rd, 2020.
[26:34]Iceland readers retreat.com.
[26:36]You can follow me on Instagram at mumsdon'thavetimetoreadbooks.
[26:40]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the sound editing.
[26:44]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[26:49]Thanks for listening.
[26:50]You can always email me at zippyowans.com.