Please welcome Dara Horn, author of All Other Nights. Dara will be chatting on LibraryThing until June 15th.

Hello, this is Dara Horn. I'm so thrilled to have this opportunity to "meet" with readers, and to talk about All Other Nights and some of the ideas it presents.

Have you ever read a book you really loved, and then gone back to read more books by the same author-- only to find, after about the third book, that the author is writing the same book over an over again? I remember loving The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, liking Norwegian Wood, and then getting to South of the Border, West of the Sun and thinking, "Gee, I wonder if this will be about a disaffected young man, a mysteriously missing girlfriend, and a hidden history of suicide." (Indeed it was.) Something similar had happened to me as a teenager with books by Chaim Potok. Truthfully it can happen with any author at all, and it's enough to destroy the whole premise of book recommendations. But as an author myself, I had written two novels, In the Image and The World to Come that were both historical-and-contemporary interwoven stories dealing with Jewish texts and traditions... and I saw that I was running the risk of repeating myself too. I decided, with my third novel, that I wanted to do something different. So I did.

All Other Nights is a story of Civil War spies, but it's not a conventional espionage tale. The main character, Jacob Rappaport, is a Jewish soldier in the Union army whose commanders find out he has relatives in New Orleans, including an uncle involved in a plot to kill Lincoln. They then send him to New Orleans to assassinate his uncle before the plot can progress. For his next mission, his superiors find another spy for him to pursue, this time the daughter of a family acquaintance. When he tells them he's unwilling to assassinate a woman, they tell him, "Don't worry, we don't want you to murder her-- we want you to marry her." Suffice it to say that this marriage doesn't work out the way anyone expected.

I was drawn to this type of story in part by how polarized America has become in recent years, how everyone has very fixed ideas about what it means to be a real American, whatever those ideas are, and how no one will talk to anyone who disagrees.

I've often been frustrated by the lack of plotting in contemporary novels (including my own!), so I wrote this book almost like a nineteenth-century novel-- with cliffhangers everywhere and all kinds of extreme twists and turns. But the real purpose of the story turned out to be something more akin to my previous novels: exploring forgotten corners of Jewish history, and also dealing with questions of how we define who we are through the moral choices we make and the people toward whom we devote ourselves.

So in the end I may have repeated myself after all. I hope that readers will still enjoy it!

Well, I'll be the first to make a comment, before the bar is set too high. I'm not a literary person, not a writer, not that good a reader. (By that I mean that I will miss almost every hidden meaning, and overlook every sort of literary device that doesn't wave a flag in my face. Maybe not quite that bad, but close enough.) All Other Nights is the first of your books that I've read. I chose it because of its connection to the civil war (I've got a civil war category in my 999 challenge). I loved it. I adore all kinds of spy novels and thrillers, and to have a spy story set during the civil war was novel and fascinating.

I read your book and reviewed it as one of the Early Reviewer books through Library Thing. I loved it! It is interesting to read that you modeled your book after a 19th century novel. Ironically, that is exactly how I felt when I read it. I also found your intricate plot twists and dips a pleasure to read.
I was surprised that Jacob was so easily persuaded to commit the first crime against his family. Without really knowing Jacob it was difficult to fathom his coldness at that point. He doesn't come across as a cold blooded killer.
Was that your intention?

#4 I'm interested to hear the answer to your question. I also didn't think Jacob seemed like a cold-blooded killer, more of a naive private who had yet realized that he could say "no".

Thanks for your enthusiasm for my book, and for your question about the main character. This gives me the opportunity (for the reader who claims to require a red flag in order to notice a literary device!) to say something very uncool, which is that I modeled the character of Jacob Rappaport, somewhat subtly (I hope), after the Jacob in the biblical book of Genesis.

The Jacob in the Bible-- the third patriarch, and the founder of the nation of Israel (his name in later episodes is Israel, which means "struggles with God")-- is one of the more fascinating characters in the Hebrew bible, specifically because he starts out as a pushover, liar and all-around moral degenerate, and ultimately becomes a profoundly loyal, empathetic, and faithful human being worthy of the title of father, both of children and a nation. I not only named Rappaport after him, but even copied many of the main events of the biblical Jacob's life into Rappaport's.

Like the biblical Jacob, this Jacob betrays his family of origin, lies to his father, flees his father's house, does horrific and family-shattering things by caving to the mere suggestions of others (the biblical Jacob's mother is the one who suggests that he trick his blind father out of his brother's blessing, for instance), abuses his uncle's hospitality in order to commit heinous crimes against him, then falls in love and is ultimately duped by a set of sisters... and then begins to change by falling in love, by being brutally injured in a fight he didn't start (the biblical Jacob also winds up with a limp), and ultimately by choosing for himself the family and faith that is worthy of his devotion.

The idea of a character who changes over the course of a book was very rare in ancient literature. (Just think of something like the Odyssey, where Odysseus goes on a twenty-year trip and returns exactly the same, even with the same wife waiting for him.) The way the character of Jacob is developed in Genesis was quite a revolutionary literary technique. It was also a religious revolution in what it suggested about the possibility of repentance and the human capacity for change. It was this story that I hoped to evoke (lehavdil, as we say in Hebrew/Yiddish-- that is, not that my book and Genesis are even on the same shelf!) in creating a main character who begins the story as a rather hollow, callous and thereby contemptible figure, and who emerges from it changed.

You are right that Jacob does not begin the book as a "cold-blooded killer." Instead, he begins the book as a passive person, a blank slate who accepts others' orders without taking responsibility for his choices-- indeed, without believing that he has a choice at all. (Tied into all this, of course, is the way the officers see him versus the way he sees himself, and the fact that he almost unconsciously accepts their antisemitism to the point where he genuinely believes in their views and feels compelled to prove himself against them. This is the real psychological foundation for his choice to assassinate his uncle, and it has to do with both the immigrant experience and also with very destructively ingrained psychological problems of Jewish history... but that's a different question which I'm happy to discuss later.) As the book proceeds, however, he becomes more and more aware of the choices he has made and the fact that-- as even a slave in the book tells him-- there are always choices, even when there appear to be none.

The very first paragraph of the novel says that Jacob embarked on this mission because he was "unable to understand that he could have said no." Without giving anything away, the very last thing Jacob says in the book, on the book's very last page, is "No." How he gets from here to there, in my mind at least, is the real story of the book, which is a story of one person's transformation into a fully moral human being-- which, both on the page and in real life, is the journey from being a supporting character in someone else's story to being the main character in one's own.

The "no's" on either end of the story, incidentally, are part of another structure built into the book, which is that the entire book can be read as a palindrome, like the codes that the youngest spy sister uses when she speaks. But that's a different question.

Thanks for the "red flag"!

Thanks for filling in so much of the background of Jacob.

I'll take the bait. Why did the younger sister have such interest in making palindromes? Would you please explain the purpose for her eccentricity in the story aside from the obvious necessity to write in cipher?

The ciphers in the book are partly there for fun. Codes are one of the more accessible features of Civil War espionage, for the simple reason that by the 1930s military codes were already being generated by machines, but prior to that, codes were just clever people making puzzles. (You can read more about the Northern and Southern ciphers and their effectiveness on my website at www.darahorn.com/ciphers.htm .) And you are right that Rose, the youngest of the spy sisters, has her talent for word puzzles in part to showcase the real ciphers used in the war. But as I created her character, I saw her obsession with palindromes develop a more symbolic meaning.

Everyone in the novel speaks in code, whether it is an official military code or something more subtle. The most metaphoric of these codes is the deceit the Levy sisters use to bait Jacob, and Jacob's use of the same deceit with them and later with Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's Jewish secretary of state and spymaster. But there are more explicit codes as well, like when Jacob meets a woman who presents him with the riddle "What is the opposite of meat?" in order to determine whether he is Jewish. (A person raised in the Jewish tradition with its dietary laws would automatically give the very unobvious answer "milk.") Or in a more negative vein, the words that Jacob's superior officers use to describe him when presenting him with compromising assignments-- "cosmopolitan," "sophisticated," "well-connected," "calculating", "clever," "convincing"-- appear on the surface to be flattery, but they are also very unsubtle suggestions of classic antisemitic caricatures of Jewish businessmen. And the novel itself also includes many coded references that readers familiar with the Hebrew bible or Jewish liturgy might notice, from Jacob's aunt's discussion of her "four sons" (a reference to four metaphorical sons that appear in the traditional Passover liturgy) to Jacob stumbling in the final scene over the grave of "Ezekiel Hanavee, Jr., Father and Visionary" ("Hanavee" is Hebrew for "the Prophet," referring to the biblical Ezekiel who saw God raise the dry bones of the dead and return them to life), and many others like this throughout the book.

But Rose's particular obsession with palindromes is a clue to the larger structure of the book as well. A palindrome is a phrase that is the same backwards and forwards, like "Now, sir, a war is won." The novel itself can be read as a palindrome, in that the same events happen at the beginning and the end but with opposite results, as though the story halfway through the book became a mirror version of itself. I mentioned earlier how the book's first page begins with Jacob being unable to say no, and ends on the last page with him saying no. Similar mirrored events continue as you proceed into the book. In the opening section Jacob finds himself in a Jewish cemetery and commits to a decision between his family and his country; in the concluding section, Jacob finds himself in a Jewish cemetery and commits to a decision between his family and his country-- but makes the opposite choice. At the book's beginning, Jacob makes a choice involving a plot to kill Lincoln, and as a result Lincoln lives; at the book's end, Jacob makes a choice involving a plot to kill Lincoln, and as a result Lincoln dies (I know, spoiler alert). Near the beginning, Jacob first enters the Levy sisters' lives by meeting Rose; near the end, he first reenters the Levy sisters' lives by meeting Rose (okay, I'll avoid spoilers here). Toward the middle of the book Jacob sends a woman he views as family to jail; on the other side of the middle of the book Jacob frees a woman he views as family from jail. In the book's first half, his lover's former lover points a gun at his head and one of them comes out irreparably harmed; in the book's second half, his lover's former lover points a gun at his head and the other one comes out irreparably harmed. I can't go into further details without even more spoilers, but the book is very carefully structured in this way throughout.

But unlike Rose's use of the palindromes, which is mostly for fun (though she does end up saying certain things that make more sense than would seem possible), this larger structuring serves a greater purpose. The book's first half charts a man's progression into a moral morass, but then the second half of the book charts his emergence from it-- suggesting the possibility, impossible though it may appear, of redemption.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jun 4, 2009, 11:09pm.

Thanks so much...this was very interesting. Very clever writing.

After reading All other Nights which I enjoyed very much. I picked up The World to Come which I haven't read as yet. But looking forward to it.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jun 3, 2009, 8:33pm.

Dear Dara,

Thank you for All Other Nights -- I absolutely loved it. It fascinated me so much that I forced myself to read very slowly when I got to the last chapters because I didn't want to leave the completely believable world and characters you had created! And after I did finish it, I was so haunted by it that I was unable to start reading any other book for days. Very few novels have had such an effect on me.

I think the biggest surprise for me was the section set in Mississippi. Although you provided several clues, I didn't even consider Abigail's identity (trying to avoid spoilers here) until she spoke the riddle. Then I gasped. I realized that I, like Jacob, was led astray by fixed ideas about what I thought I knew, even though the truth was there in front of me.

It's taken me a long time to get around to my question, which is about the "pillar of fire" in Holly Springs. Did you intend another Biblical reference? As I was reading, it seemed to be a classic purification or trial by fire, or even the chance for an unrecognized return -- like Odysseus.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm for the book.

Yes, the pillar of fire is a biblical reference to the book of Exodus: when the Israelites leave Egypt, they are led by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. This image appears in the novel several times. I saw it less as a purification from sin than as something more akin to the biblical image, as a light leading one to freedom. The incident in the book to which you refer is a turning point in Jacob's progress from being mentally enslaved to the expectations of others to being fully free-- free in the sense of the Hebrew bible, that is, to consciously choose one's obligations to the world.

The image appears at several other points in the book as well. Before Jacob's wedding, when Jacob is staying with the elderly Jewish widower Isaacs (whom I named after the biblical patriarch, the biblical Jacob's blind father), Isaacs is lamenting the lack of young Jewish men for the Levy girls to marry in the Virginia town where they live, and the weakness of the American Jewish community in general, and says, "Living here is like living in the wilderness, with no pillar of fire to lead us." At Jacob's wedding the following day, when a dramatic incident ensues (wow, it is really hard to write about this book without spoiling anything!), the character who suddenly intervenes and changes the course of events is described as "blazing like a pillar of fire." This character becomes a role model for Jacob when they meet again later in the novel, as the person in the book who most fully appreciates that freedom does not mean avoiding responsibility but consciously choosing to accept it.

As it happens, the result of Jacob's more literal encounter with the "pillar of fire" does offer him the chance at an unrecognized return, like Odysseus. But when Odysseus returns to his family in Ithaca, nothing has changed, even though twenty years have passed. Jacob Rappaport's return is more like the return of the biblical Jacob. He returns as a different person.

Wow! I did't know I could ever "talk" to you. I loved your first two books. It took me a while to figure out the relationships in the first book; but when I did I reviewed the family tree in the back repeatedly. So clever!!

Normally, I would never pick up a Civil War novel, but because you wrote All Other Nights I requested it from Early Reviewers. Although I have received several other books from this program, I did not receive this one.

Now seeing the comments and explanations, I will certainly pick up a copy and read it. In fact I will read anything you write, because I love the way you tell a story.

Dara, thanks for filling in all the blanks for us. Would you talk a little about Abigail and her role in the book. So far the discussion has centered around Jacob and Rose. How did you develop her character? I see Abigail as a Gemini personality, both strong and weak. My impression is that she is influenced and swayed by others and has less self direction. I see her as a mysterious member of the spy ring.

It's wonderful for me to "talk" with readers too. I hope I can answer any questions you might have about the new book.

The reader above asked me to talk about the character Abigail, though from the question it looks like that reader may have actually meant Jeannie. But I'll talk about Abigail (whom I'll try to discuss without giving much away plotwise), and then if you'd like me to discuss Jeannie too you can let me know.

Abigail is another figure in the novel whose presence has a biblical resonance. In an impromptu comedy that Jacob's fellow soldiers put on, they dramatize an episode from the first Book of Samuel (chapter 28) in which the Israelite King Saul, who has banned witches in his kingdom, faces a major battle and God refuses to advise him. He decides he must consult the prophet Samuel, his lifelong counselor, who has passed away. Breaking his own law, Saul disguises himself as a commoner and approaches a witch (the Hebrew term is actually something more like a "medium"; there is a separate Hebrew word for witch) and asks her to raise Samuel's ghost. The woman immediately fears entrapment but does raise the ghost--who then identifies Saul and condemns him, saying that God is still punishing him for prior sins.

In All Other Nights, Abigail is the "witch of Holly Springs," playing the role of the medium who both raises the dead and forces Jacob to confront his previous sins. By using Abigail as a medium in this way, Jacob imagines that he can redeem himself from his past by committing himself to her in ways he had failed to commit himself to the person whose memory she evokes for him. Unlike Saul, however, Jacob is not entirely doomed, and in the sacrifices he makes on behalf of Abigail, he discovers that the opportunity to actually revisit past sins and atone for them is not merely a fantasy.

There are two more things I want to mention about Abigail that some readers have commented on. (Neither of these will make sense for those who haven't read the book yet.) The first thing involves sexuality. Some readers felt that Abigail's decision to initiate an affair outside of marriage was anachronistic because the risk of pregnancy was high and the fallout for an unwed mother severe. This is true, of course-- which is why Abigail initiates the affair deliberately in order to get pregnant, because she believes she knows enough about the man (not merely about his upbringing or supposed manners but also about his particular personal past and its reflection on her) that she is confident that this would compel him to marry her, which would be to the advantage of her and her brothers because he is in a position of power as an officer in an occupying army. This still involves considerable risk and it may not be the smartest move on her part, but it is certainly a conscious decision, and I just wanted to make it clear that I care very much about avoiding anachronism and did not imagine this affair as though it were a 21st century one, as some readers thought I might have. The second thing I'd like to mention is her family relationships (I can't say more), which strike some 21st century readers as improbable. Though this is very hard to imagine today, it is important to understand that such relationships were not merely more likely at the time, but even probable, because the Jewish community in America and especially in the South was not only fairly small, but much of it was arranged in a series of business networks in which siblings or other adult family members separated and traveled to different regions to broaden trade connections. (Plus there are hints to this earlier in the novel, so it doesn't come out of nowhere!)

I'm happy to discuss Jeannie as well if she was the one you meant.