Jessica Elisheva Emerson’s debut novel, “Olive Days,” is out now from Counterpoint. Set in LA’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the story follows Rina Kirsch, a Modern Orthodox Jewish woman struggling with her faith and her marriage.
She recently took the Book Pages Q&A.
Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
“Sabrina & Corina” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. I recommend it, I gift it, I evangelize it whenever I can. It is a gorgeous, funny, heartbreaking collection of stories that deal with three of my favorite subjects, from an own-voices, Indigenous Latina perspective: the American West, identity, and sense of place.
Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
“Could Anything Be Worse,” Marilyn Hirsch’s picture book version of the classic Yiddish “house too full” story. Centered on a man who is frustrated living in a cramped, one-room home with his family, and his rabbi who has him slowly add things to the home (“bring the chickens inside,” “invite the cow in,” “does your wife have any relatives?”) and then slowly take them back out. At the end, the happy family cleans and polishes their home for Shabbat and finds a new peace and contentedness with each other. I loved having my parents read it to me over and over. Once I became a strong independent reader, the spooky, empowering, feminist “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” by Joan Aiken made an indelible impact … I’ve probably read it close to a hundred times.
Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
Tim O’Brien’s final book, “America Fantastica.” I pre-ordered it last year, and it’s just been sitting in my TBR pile since it arrived. I read the first few pages hungrily and then set it back down. I was obsessed with Tim O’Brien’s books as a teenager, especially “The Nuclear Age,” and knowing it’s the last novel he’ll ever write makes me nervous to read it. Whether I love it or not, once it’s over it’s over, there will never be another Tim O’Brien.