William Shieber asked Emily Barton:

I've read and admired both of your published novels, particularly Brookland. Neither dealt with questions of Jewish identity and history (or alternate history). Why did you choose to take up these questions in the new novel?

Emily Barton Both BROOKLAND and YVES GUNDRON participate in the project of alternate history; they glance on questions of Jewish identity (Ruth Blum is Jewish; so is Tem Winship's spurned suitor) without preoccupying themselves with it. You're right that focusing on Jewish identity is new subject matter here. It's been on my mind for a while; I was writing another novel (I took a break from it to write this one) that approaches such questions from a different angle. Perhaps now is a good time in my life to start to pose such questions. I light candles on Friday nights, belong to a vibrant synagogue, have two kids in Hebrew school . . . "doing Jewish" is an integrated part of my family, social, and intellectual life. That sense of integration hasn't always been there.

At the same time, BOOK OF ESTHER is still puzzling through some of the big questions that motivate the earlier two novels -- what does technology mean? How does our relationship to it affect our relationship with the eternal? -- so I know that, having posed some questions about Jewish identity (and how that might be different now if history had gone otherwise at various points of divergence) is more like opening a conversation on those issues than like having solved them. I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Thank you so much for writing, William. I'm glad you've enjoyed the books!

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