Throughout Jewish history, rabbis have been storytellers, using any form available to interpret and share the intricacies of the faith. It is a fitting thing, then, for Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who has written 17 nonfiction books on Jewish spirituality and mysticism, to be placing his next book in the fiction section.
Kabbalah: A Love Story (Morgan Road/ Broadway) goes on sale October 10, with an initial printing of 25,000 copies. Kushner, 63, a Reform rabbi who is a teacher and writer based at Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, has crafted a novel that delves into some of the most complex ideas of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism.
Thirty-five years ago Kushner was in Safed, Israel, when he asked the caretaker of a synagogue for books on Kabbalah. The man pulled a very old copy of the Zohar— the central text of Jewish mystical teaching—out of a pile of books and papers he was planning to throw away and gave it to Kushner.
The late Gershom Scholem, regarded as the founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, was the first scholar to refer to the Zohar as "a mystical novel," and Kushner started to wonder what exactly that might mean for contemporary writers.
"I knew somehow that book was mysterious and linked to something very creative for me," he says. His novel, which features as a main character a rabbi who owns a similar book, slowly took shape in Kushner's mind over a period of 10 years.
Fiction, which has crept in snippets into some of Kushner's more recent books, came to him as an epiphany as he mulled over how best to educate others about Kabbalah. Writing fiction, he decided, would allow him to move within some mystical ideas, including concepts of the divine masculine and feminine, rather than writing about them in the straightforward manner of nonfiction prose.
"I just find the form to be so liberating," he says. "The experience of life just isn't linear and logical." He says that he hopes this novel might "forge another genre of religious writing."
One of Kushner's ongoing projects has been to present genuine, traditional Kabbalah to a wider Jewish audience, distinguishing it from what he calls the "hocus pocus" of red string bracelets and other pop-Kabbalah phenomena. "Kabbalah is a way to 'do Jewish,' " Kushner says. A Kabbalist and a nonmystically oriented Jew, he says, might look to an outside observer to be practicing their faith in precisely the same manner. "But the Kabbalist would understand the stuff he's doing profoundly differently—he would understand that what he's doing heals the divine. That's a potent, delicious way to think about religious life."
Kushner will tour more than 15 cities, including San Francisco, New York, Boston and Miami. In October and November, Kushner will also appear at several major Jewish book fairs. —Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Jamie Langston Turner
In Winter Birds (Bethany House, Sept.), her sixth novel, Jamie Langston Turner follows the old author's maxim: write what you know.
"Once again I'm exploring a theme I've treated before: the power of love to rescue men and women from despair," says Turner, a creative writing teacher at Bob Jones University. "There's plenty of despair in the lives of the characters in WinterBirds, but also the blooming of a slow, steady, ultimately triumphant love."
That kind of love has been the focus of Turner's previous works, including A Garden to Keep (Bethany House, 2001), which won the 2002 Christy Award for Contemporary Fiction, and Some Wildflower in My Heart (Bethany House, 1998), which was a CBA bestseller and hailed at its release as a sign of the improving quality of Christian fiction.
"Jamie is very popular for her unique style of writing, garnering a lot of interest in the business," says Steve Oates, v-p of marketing for Bethany House. "There are many publishing professionals who read her books and talk about them years later."
That popularity is prompting a 20,000 first printing for the trade paperback. And in search of the Christian women readers who make up the bulk of Turner's fans, Bethany House will do Web promotion and advertising in WorldMagazine, Today'sChristianWoman, LutheranWomanToday and BookPage magazines.
Winter Birds tells the story of 80-year-old Sophia Hess, who comes to live with her nephew and his wife at the end of what has been a disappointing life. The title comes from the birds Sophia watches roost outside her window and whose doings become a metaphor for her own changing outlook. The book received a starred review in the June 26 issue of PW.
But while Turner sticks to some familiar themes, she presents them in a style untried in her previous works. She describes her storytelling in WinterBirds as "spare rather than conversational" and written in the present tense, rather than in a past tense, narrative style. The shift, she explains, helps her more accurately evoke Sophia's background and mindset as she moves from bitterness to trust.
"I want the reader to come away with a reminder that this life, though full of sorrow, is only temporary," Turner says, "that what we give away is never lost, and that our love can also be the means by which we share our hope and faith." —Kimberly Winston
Stephen Lawhead
When WestBow Press wanted to be the U.S. publisher for Stephen Lawhead's newest trilogy, the company hunted the author down with a bow and arrow.
In what has to be either the brainiest or the battiest move in the history of acquisitions, Allen Arnold, WestBow's publisher, sent Lawhead a replica of an 11th-century wooden box containing a medieval archery set, courtesy of a Hollywood prop man. On top was the company's proposal—printed on parchment, bound in leather and sealed with wax.
"The only way I knew how to break through the clutter of publishers was to do something radical," says Arnold, the brain behind the scheme.
It worked. In September, WestBow Press, the fiction imprint of Thomas Nelson, will publish Lawhead's Hood: Book One in the King Raven Trilogy. It is the tale of Bran ap Brychan, prince of Elfael, who grows up to become Robin Hood. Lawhead is currently at work on Scarlet, the second in the trilogy, which will continue the tale from the point of view of Will Scarlet, one of Hood's companions. The trilogy continues the author's distinctive genre, what he calls "heroic fantasy"—a blend of the historical, the mystical and the religious.
What's different is the target audience for the book. Originally published in Great Britain as a YA title, the trilogy will be released here as adult fiction. The decision to change categories was easy, Arnold says.
"This isn't your men in tights or comic book Robin Hood," he notes. "This is an earthy, elemental, eerie tale that reimagines the character we think we know while dealing with political, societal and family issues that faced an 11th-century cast of characters."
To Lawhead—a transplanted American whose numerous historical fiction/fantasy series have told the stories of King Arthur, St. Patrick, Merlin and the Crusaders—the distinction between young adult and adult fiction is of little concern. "In recent years the line between young adult and adult has become quite blurred, so I was advised just to write the book as I saw fit," he told PW from his home in Oxford, England.
WestBow plans to print 50,000 copies of the hardcover in the first three months of sales. With what Arnold describes as a "significant" budget, there will be an author tour, advertising, concert and festival appearances and video advertising. "This will be one of our most highly promoted titles of the year," says Arnold.
Lawhead was impressed enough to offer WestBow the U.S. rights to his Song of Albion trilogy. Those books—The Paradise War (1991), The Silver Hand (1992) and The Endless Knot (1993)—will be simultaneously released with Hood.—Kimberly Winston
