Linda Press Wulf talks to Nikki Gamble about the family story behind her novel The Night of the Burning.

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Linda Press Wulf has worked as an editor, journalist, and English teacher. Born in South Africa and resident at one time or another of Canada, Japan and Israel, she has lived for nine years now in California with her husband Stanley Wulf and her two sons. Stanley is in real-life the third child of the Devorah in this story. He went to medical school and, by coincidence, won the Isaac Ochberg Award. One man, Isaac Ochberg, changed the lives of two generations of the same family.

The cover of The Night of the Burning is very evocative without giving away too much of the story. Do you like it?

I agree the delicacy of the cover is the most beautiful thing. It’s just the two girls holding hands, and then the drifting feathers, which you want to touch. I loved the cover from the first moment.

 There’s a point in the story where Devorah says in time stories will be forgotten. Was the desire to keep those stories alive part of your inspiration for writing?

 I think I feel a panic to keep history and the stories alive. When people say to me, “Oh, my mother’s got a wonderful story, you should write it,” I want to say, “You write her story. You don’t need any skill. Just get the facts down, because otherwise it’s lost.” And I feel myself starting to breathe a little quickly, because that wonderful story’s going to get lost. In the case of The Night of the Burning, not only was it a very interesting story, but it was my mother-in-law’s story. I never met her but my husband was shaped by her, and she was shaped by her story. So for me to do this research into her story was a way of getting closer to his background. And I think, wherever she is, she’s smiling, because she didn’t think her story would last.

So how did you unravel the story? Was it through your husband telling what he knew or did you have to probe deeper than that?

Well, my husband told me the very bare bones and I contacted his sister, who lives in Cape Town, and asked her to go to the Orphanage there and get me the documents about their arrival and adoption and so on. That’s how little I knew at that time; I thought there was still such a building. Of course she discovered that the Orphanage had been long demolished, and that the Archives were kept by the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. She went there, and photocopied two extraordinary documents, which were the adoption documents of the two sisters, her mother and her aunt. And she sent those to me, and I think that’s when the story got hold of me. There’s something that gets under your skin when you see real documents that record the cause of parents’ death: “Father: swelling. Mother: hunger and typhoid.” I knew that they’d been left in the care of their aunt, who’d been killed in a pogrom. So I started researching, and I went to YIVO, the Institute of Jewish Research in New York, which is a wonderful repository, and found out more about their village. Then I went to Cape Town on a holiday and I met one of the orphans. She was 80 years old and sharp as a tack. I interviewed her that year, and again two years later when I went back. When I went back the second time and I hadn’t published the book, she said “What you asking me all these questions for? Just go publish the book already.” She didn’t know that it would take me 11 years…

How much of the story came from your imagination?

The nature of historical fiction means that I had to make things up. My husband would say things like, “My Mum didn’t think anyone should stick out.” And that informed how I wrote the book. It was dangerous to be conspicuous. If you knew the answer you should keep your hand down, because if your head stuck over the parapet, they would knock it down. And so I made her into a very cautious girl, looking behind her, very aware of the walls telling stories. I built up her personality layer by layer. When I submitted the story to publishers quite a number of the rejections said that this girl was so cautious and defensive that readers would not be able to identify with her. That’s when I realised I’d made her single-faceted and I had to use my imagination to give her positive characteristics like resourcefulness, artistic talent, which are completely fictional. I felt I was being disloyal because it was the first time I had to make up something without any evidence. A friend said to me, “Are you brave enough to venture into fiction?” and that was the impetus for me to turn her into a character that readers can identify with.

 What impact has the book had on your husband’s family?

 My husband is enormously appreciative. He feels that I’ve saved something of his life. His nephews have written to me about their grandmother, thanking me for sustaining the family narrative. I found that very moving. I didn’t do it for anybody’s appreciation or gratefulness, and I was very moved when they were appreciative. I did change one historical detail, which upset my husband. The aunt was not killed by stabbing in a barn. She was killed by a gunshot, by a Cossack on his horse, and one of the few things that Devorah ever said about her childhood was that she remembers the flash of light from the gun, and the kids were hiding behind their aunt, and thought they were also dead, and then the Cossack reeled up. She saw the horse rear up and ride off, and they couldn’t believe that he wasn’t going to finish them off. When I had to write the pogrom chapter, I was so reluctant to delve into that horror, that I delayed and delayed it. And finally, I went to the Jewish Library in San Francisco, looked up the period, looked at so many descriptions of pogroms that I was actually nauseous, went home and wrote it quickly, all in one go, forgetting in my mind, this picture that my husband had told me, of the rearing horse and the gunfire.

How did the account told to you by the orphan in Cape Town make its way into this story?

The episode of singing, “God Ser the King,” because she didn’t know that it was, “God save the King,” came from her story. And by the way, I just found out this morning that the sisters didn’t stay in a hotel; they stayed in a Poor Jews’ Shelter, but to them that was so luxurious, that she remembered it as being a hotel. So I wrote that it was a wonderful hotel with soft pile carpets and real beds which would’ve been huge luxury to them.

I wondered whether there’s also something of your own childhood in this book, even though it’s somebody else’s historical narrative?

The scene where Devorah wants a kitten so badly is from my husband’s childhood. When she finally gets one it won’t stop crying so she insists that it’s taken back. I felt that an orphan wrenched from her parents would have that empathy with an animal crying for its mother. Another element from my childhood is the black maid in the home, who sits on the step stool with her chin resting in her one palm, and occasionally clicks her teeth and sighs. That was very much a picture of my childhood, of the maid in the kitchen. Only now do I realise how much she had to sigh about. How sad her life was. How much she gave to me, when she couldn’t be with her own children full-time.

 I was fascinated by the motif of hair. Where did that come from?

There was a girl in my school who had long, long, long, white hair, and she would sit in class, not listening to the teacher at all, combing her hair endlessly. And it looked gorgeous for a second, after the comb had been through, and then she’d start again. And I remember chewing on the bristly end of my braid, and I notice people who have nervous mechanisms, they twirl their hair, or they keep pushing it behind their ear, even though it’s never going to stay there. So I took all those memories and put them in. The little girl Monica keeps pushing her hair behind her ear. Devorah chews on the bristle of her hair. Her hair is always tight, pulled tightly back from her face, and tied into a braid, and only when she starts loosening up and her friend tells her that she has absolutely gorgeous hair does she let it be free Her hair represents her life.

Tell me about the structuring of the novel. You could have told this as a straightforward chronological narrative, but you didn’t. The night of the burning is interwoven through the narrative until it builds to the climax.

Well, one of my rejections suggested a more interesting structure. At that point it was written chronologically exactly as it unfolded. I wondered what on earth a ‘more interesting’ narrative structure was. And then somebody said, “If you just clip all the chapters together with a paper clip, and you move this one here, and this one here and this one here, you can intersperse past, present, past, present, past present almost without changing a word.” The next time I sent it out, I thought, have I really messed up my chances by doing this weird thing with the structure? Children like to know how stories unfold. And I remember the satisfaction that I got the first time that I read Bible stores in chronological order. But I realised that The Night of the Burning, which is both the name of the book, and the name of the chapter with the pogrom, really brings the book to a central climax. After that, the two parts of her life should coincide, so it actually only alternates up until that chapter. After that it is less action centred and focuses on the emotional development as she starts feeling safer, and she lets her hair down literally. She makes a friend, starts flirting with the girlfriend’s brother, is complimented on her artistic talent and starts to believe that she can be happy. The final burden is released from her when somebody else takes responsibility for the stories.

That was a bit of good advice. It’s interesting to hear you talk about the book in two halves in that way.

It’s affected the structure of my next book. I’m working on a book called The Youngest Crusaders it’s about the Children’s Crusades in 1212 which were led by two 12 year olds, one from Germany and one from France. They led 30,000 kids and 20,000 kids, respectively. My story is about a boy who eventually joins the Crusade with alternating chapters about a much younger, unsophisticated girl, who eventually joins the Crusades. At the end of the procession, when the water does not open and allow them to walk dry-shod through to the Holy Land, they find each other. The second half of the book continues with them as a couple.

Apart from Devorah, there are lots of other people in the book who touch on her life. You mention them in you Afterword. How did you go about finding out about these people? What records were there?

I was put in touch with a woman in South Africa who collected oral histories from the few survivors and their descendents; her footage has been sold to Rainmaker Films, who’ve hired John Blair, to produce a documentary based on the material. Through her research, I got in touch with a few survivors’ children and grandchildren. I also read a book written by the daughter of Isaac Ochberg, who is the saviour of the book.

As you’ve said, this story is about your husband’s family but in your dedication you pay tribute to your own family. How did they help shape the book?

My father was not educated beyond High School. He did very well in High School, but in those times they could only send one child out of four to University, and that was the older brother. My father went into business with his brother. But my father was a tremendous lover of words and the craft of words. He was well known as a speech-maker and everybody would ask him to be the speech-maker at events. Later when I was at school, I became a public speaker and debater in the various clubs in school. And my father drilled me. And he would write a business letter with four drafts. He knew the power of each word. He knew that if you say, “I am considering this,” or “I am thinking about this,” it had a different effect on the listener. He also had a wonderful library of books, so even though I didn’t read all of them, I had all the Classics available, and I knew these were important books.

 My brother loved history. He was very studious, and very bright. He would give me books to read about Anne Boleyn and Catherine the Great. I thought these books were entertaining and I started to love history through him.

My sister is a tremendously encouraging force in my life, so when she read the book and liked it, it was very sustaining.

The last person in my family that I dedicated the book to was my aunt. She was a very literary person, and she called me her “Book Girl”. And she had a store of books in her present cupboard, and she would give one or two of them to me when I came to visit her, and she always sent us a book token for birthdays. And she was a big influence on me. When I found out that she was the volunteer librarian at the Orphanage after most of the orphans left there was something about fate that had drawn me to this story.

The book won prizes while it was in manuscript form. That’s such a positive way for encouraging new talent.

Yes, when it won two awards in manuscript, I felt I had something to hold onto for the 11 years. If I ever give a prize, or donate a prize for writing, I would always donate it to a book in manuscript form that hasn’t been published yet. I think it’s an incredible way to cultivate new writers, because so many people don’t know whether what they’ve written is good or not.

The book was eleven years in the writing. What do you learn about yourself as a writer in 11 years? AAre you a different writer at the end of that process?

 If I could just put myself in a chair, tie myself down, I can write very quickly, but I cannot get into that chair. I know now that I need to set a time for writing. I have a writing friend, who’s the mother of a child that my kid is friendly with. We meet at a café, and we write together at the same table on our laptops. And I find that very, very productive. I am disciplined; I focus on what I’m doing. I don’t hear what’s going on around me, and it’s been a real step up for me. And I hope to complete my next book much more quickly.

 Do you think you will write about growing up in South Africa?

 One of the books that I’m currently writing is a memoir of the last two decades living in South Africa under Apartheid, which was the most surreal period. Even those of us who were involved in Anti-Apartheid politics were really not truly cognisant of how bad the situation was. It’s terribly difficult, because you don’t want to hurt people who are still alive, or their children. And so I think I’ll have to change the voice to perhaps a neighbourhood girl whom I knew quite well. But I don’t want those memories, sick as some of them are, to be lost either.

Thank you Linda Press Wulf for Talking to Write Away

 Download a reading guide for The Night of The Burning  from Bloomsbury

http://www.bloomsbury.com/media/The_Night_of_the_Burning_RG.pdf