The Mapmaker's Daughter (42 page)

9. Judah explains that love and power must be in balance to reach the highest form of compassion. What does this mean? Do you agree?

10. “Anywhere you can be a Jew is home…and exile is anywhere you cannot.” Does this apply to any aspect of one’s identity?

11. Amalia’s reaction to Jamil is immediate and powerful. Have you ever had an encounter like that?

12. How does poetry, both their own and that of famous poets, help Amalia and Jamil build their relationship?

13. Though having different religions ultimately divides Amalia and Jamil, are there are ways in which their religious identities strengthen their relationship?

14. The ritual of the mikveh occurs numerous times in
The Mapmaker’s Daughter
. What does it mean for the women who practice it?

15. When Amalia can’t decide if she should stay in Queluz or go to Granada with Jamil, Simona tells her, “Living here in Queluz should be your choice, not just something where you say, ‘Oh, look where I ended up,’ without knowing how it happened.” Is there anything about your life that illustrates what Simona means?

16. What does Amalia offer her daughter that was missing in her own childhood? How does that influence the kind of adult Eliana becomes?

17. What does Amalia find most surprising about Granada? Was the Muslim culture also surprising to you? How?

18. Did Amalia do the right thing ending her relationship with Jamil? Is there any way they might have been able to salvage it?

19. Elizabeth’s husband, King Juan, has been quoted as saying it was “better to be born to a journeyman than to the King of Castile.” After reading about the Castilian court, do you agree?

20. Amalia wonders, “How can it be that I can say in great detail what happened when I was eight or twelve, but now shake my head in bewilderment when I try to remember year by year what has happened since? Decades of my life are swallowed whole, and it doesn’t seem possible that I have filled each day with one thing or another.” Do you see your life the same way?

21. Amalia and Eliana cope with the loss of their world in Queluz by cleaning house. Have you found ritual ways to console yourself in times of great turmoil and grief? Were you surprised by what gave you comfort?

22. “The success of old age is to die while you still wish to live,” Judah says. “To take your last breath still wanting more.” Do you agree?

23. When Nita’s parents are killed, Amalia describes “Torquemada’s stark vision of divine retribution ris[ing] in smoke above the crowd in the square, while in this dark and narrow street, every wall, every cobblestone, every doorway is charged with the sacredness of God’s presence in this moment.” Why does she view the moment of Nita’s rescue as being so sacred?

24. Based on what you learned by reading
The Mapmaker’s Daughter
and what you already know about Ferdinand and Isabella, Torquemada, and the Inquisition, what do you think Ferdinand and Isabella were trying to accomplish by expelling the Jews from Spain?

25.
The Mapmaker’s Daughter
is intended as a showcase of the frequently unsung strength and courage of women. At what points in the novel did you feel that most profoundly? Do any of the characters stand out in particular for you in this respect?

26. The ghost of Amalia’s grandfather, mapmaker Abraham Cresques, says of the atlas at the end of the novel, “Though we didn’t know it at the time, it has its own reasons for being.” What reasons for the atlas’ existence are revealed during the novel? What future reasons might there be?

Suggestions for Book Club Activities

1. Look up online images of the Catalan Atlas and discuss its characteristics and how these are brought into the novel.

2. Look up the rituals and blessings involved in the mikveh and/or Shabbat, and discuss how these might reflect and shape the world view of people who observe these practices.

3. Read the poems in the book aloud.

4. Get a CD or download of medieval Sephardic music and discuss how it influences the way you view the culture described in the book.

5. Look up “Judah Abravanel, Poem to His Son” to read online what Judah Abravanel wrote after sending his infant son to Portugal to foil the kidnapping plot.

A Conversation with the Author

Q: Why did you choose to write a novel on this subject?

A: Like everyone, I wonder how the human race is going to figure out a way to move beyond the ignorance and hatred that so polarizes our world. When I was first exposed to the term “Convivencia,” or “living together,” the label given to medieval Iberia during the centuries it was populated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, I naively thought I would find a shining example of a diverse, multicultural society that had created a community of tolerance and mutual gain.

After months of study, I began seeing the Convivencia as containing more warnings than answers for our time. I hope readers will benefit from reading about people long ago who encountered some of the same issues we face, whose behavior holds up a mirror by which we can confront the awful results of religious and other forms of prejudice, as well as look with new appreciation at our incredibly diverse society and affirm that it represents the kind of world we want to live in.

Q: Is there a personal connection between you and the story of the Jews in medieval Iberia?

A: I have written a number of books on Jewish themes (most notably
Until
Our
Last
Breath
, my 2008 nonfiction book on Jewish resistance in the Holocaust), so choosing a Jewish subject was nothing new. I have identified with Jews and been drawn to Jewish culture on a very deep psychological level since I was a young girl. A number of years ago, I became what I suppose might be called a reverse converso—a Jew by choice (that’s the preferred term today). Though I am not conventionally religious, I feel a great sense of connection and community with other Jews, and I enjoy promoting knowledge and understanding of Jewish history among Jews and non-Jews alike. I am a novelist and a Jew, both by choice, and the two came together in
The
Mapmaker’s Daughter
.

Q: What particular challenges did you face writing this book?

A: The biggest challenges came about as the result of early decisions I made about the structure of the book. I wanted to include both Henry the Navigator and Queen Isabella as characters, and to do this, I needed to have my protagonist live across a number of generations. This was new for me, since my previous novels have ended while the protagonists are still fairly young.

Having Amalia look back at her life as she is going into exile meant I had to choose a first-person narration, and that can be tricky. I had to write as Amalia, avoiding anything she couldn’t have known or wouldn’t have thought. I had to see things through her eyes, which, in this case, meant I had to write many religious sentiments I don’t agree with. She believed in an omnipresent and omnipotent God, and that’s what matters.

Another challenge was that the flashbacks had to be told in the present tense, because she is slipping into reverie. She’s not telling someone else her story; she is reliving it herself. Add to that the need to switch back and forth between her present situation and her past, and I think it should be obvious why I view this book as the most complex I have written to date.

The character of Diogo was also touchy for me. Amalia is my only voice, and early in the book she doesn’t see Diogo for what he is. I had to find a way to slip in some clues for the reader without giving Amalia insights she didn’t have. I tried to do this by veiled allusions to Henry’s homosexuality (which, by the way, is strongly suggested by the historical record) and his unusual favor toward Diogo, as well as by Diogo’s self-centeredness and indifference toward Amalia even as he is asking her to marry him. Only Amalia should be surprised to find her marriage is a disaster, because the reader should have seen it coming.

Diogo is cold, calculating, and unethical, faults that have nothing to do with his sexual orientation. It makes no difference if he is gay or straight. He is reprehensible as a human being, period, and knowingly dragging a naive young woman into a loveless and unfulfilling marriage simply adds to his ugliness.

Q: Historical novelists frequently have to make adjustments in the facts to make their stories work. What did you have to invent or change?

A: Of all my books, I had to invent the most and at the same time change the least in this one. First, I had to create from scratch all the Jewish and Muslim women in the book. In occasional references to his wife in his writings, Isaac Abravanel never mentioned her name. For me, this lack of concrete information is both the dilemma and the driving impetus to be a historical novelist. These women existed, despite the fact we must now invent them, and because they existed, I feel compelled to do what needs to be done so that their lives can be celebrated.

All the women in the Alhambra are my inventions, but the Christian princesses, queens, and other of high rank are real people, although in some cases with minor adjustments in their names. Elizabeth is the Anglicized version of Isabel or Isabella, because I thought it would be too confusing to have Amalia’s childhood friend have the same name as the queen who will figure so prominently later. I kept the Portuguese or Spanish versions of most names, with a few exceptions. Henry the Navigator and Ferdinand of Aragon will be more recognizable that way than as Enrique and Fernando.

What I mean by having to change the least is that there is very little deviation from what I know to be true about the events I describe. With one exception, events happened when, where, and how I wrote them. The exception is the description of the Inquisition in Toledo, which I condensed to preserve the narrative pace. The period of grace would have ended in the early fall of 1485, but the first auto-da-fé was not held until the following February. At that time, 750 people were paraded before the public, where their “crimes” were read aloud, fined up to one-fifth of their fortunes (used to fund the war against Granada), physically punished, and humiliated in various other ways. None were killed. Executions began in August, almost a year after the events I describe.

Likewise, an auto-da-fé was an all-day event, with long sermons and the reading of the crimes of each of as many as 750 victims. My research indicates that the burnings at the stake sometimes were held in Plaza de Zocodover, but in most places, the condemned were taken outside the city walls for their executions, so it may have been only the ceremonies that were held in the plaza.

In some cases, sources are inconsistent as to where the Abravanels lived at particular times, so I chose what worked best for the story. Also, because it helped the story, I left out many family members because there was no role for them to play, and I thought there were already enough characters to keep track of.

Q: Are there any aspects of this book that gave you particular pleasure to write?

A: I enjoyed working in Jewish ritual practices and customs wherever I could, and I also particularly liked writing the scenes set in Muslim Granada, because it was such an enticing culture. Most of all, I reveled in the Hebrew and Arabic poetry that is part of Amalia’s relationship with Judah and Jamil. Iberia was one of the great centers of medieval poetry, due in large part to the great and longstanding tradition of secular Arabic poetry. It was my pleasure to introduce readers to some poets they probably haven’t heard much about and to write poems of my own for Amalia and Jamil, imitating the contemporary styles.

Q: This is your fourth novel, and all four have been about different places and eras. How do you choose a subject?

A: It may seem as if I am all over the place, but really I’m not. The unifying drive and focus of all my work is forgotten or underappreciated women and their stories. I’m a professor of humanities at San Diego City College, and my textbooks briefly mention a number of women. Writing a book is a huge investment, and one has to be far more than merely interested in a subject to take it on. I wait until someone gets under my skin, until I find myself thinking about her during the day and already seeing scenes and hearing dialogue in my head. Then I’m a goner.

Acknowledgments

I have been blessed with a small and capable group of people willing to read
The
Mapmaker’s Daughter
in manuscript and offer critiques and suggestions. First, as always, I want to acknowledge my sister, Lynn Wrench, who is tireless at finding things that need to be more real, more powerful, more vivid, and just plain better.

Pamela Lear, Honey Amado, Saul Matalon, and Hillary Liber have my sincere gratitude for reading all or part of this novel in draft and helping me make it not only accurate from a Jewish perspective but supportive of a culture I love. The late Gail Forman used some of her life’s last energy to read and comment on an early draft. May her memory be a blessing.

Shokran to my lifelong friends Katharina Harlow and Aisha Jill Morgan for their assistance with the portions of the book requiring a deeper understanding of Arabic and Islam.

Sincere thanks also go to Dolores Sloan, whose book on the Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal and personal efforts to track down details made a huge difference in the quality of the finished product. Also many thanks to two more lifelong friends, Reverend Nancy Pennekamp and Reverend Mark McKenzie, who helped me figure out Eucharistic practices of the time, and to Rabbi Zoe Klein for her support throughout.

Many thanks go to my editor at Sourcebooks, Shana Drehs, and assistant editor Anna Klenke, and once again, I want to lavish praise on my agent, Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, who shepherds me through the process with grace, good humor, and much patience.