Ilana, a Jewish Latina teenager from Miami Beach, spends the summer across the ocean in Prague. As an aspiring violinist, Ilana feels misunderstood by her parents, who envision a more pragmatic future for their daughter. While staying with her aunt Žofie in the Czech capital, she falls in love with a kindred spirit, a Jewish boy named Benjamin. The fact is that Benjamin turns out to be literally a spirit.
“Ghosts of Rose Hill,” a new young adult novel by R. M. Romero, is both a ghost story, a love story and a hymn to the Jewish and Latin American diasporas, told in loose verse. The e-book draws on the author’s background as a Jewish Latina as well as her volunteer paintings renovating historic Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe. Released earlier this year and critically acclaimed, its otherworldly plot elements make it an excellent selection for Halloween.
“I think ghosts are inherently romantic,” Romero told The Times of Israel. “They still long for the life they lost and the world they no longer have. “
Lost worlds permeate the book, whether it’s the centuries-old tragedy of Benjamin’s circle of relatives or the branches of the tree in Ilana’s circle of relatives, on her father’s side affected by the Prague Spring and on her mother’s side affected by the Cuban Revolution.
In the novel, Ilana reflects on her Sephardic great-grandmothers: “They fled from the pyres / (the flames / fueled by hatred) / devouring / the street corners, / the synagogues, / the cemeteries / of Spain, / crossing the ocean / / with their religion / and the Shabbat candlesticks / hid their skirts”, an exodus that strangely presaged her mother’s escape from Castro.
Noting that exile figured prominently in his own father’s narrative — his circle of relatives fled communist Cuba from the 1950s to the early 1980s — Romero added: “This theme is very common, obviously, also for Jews, whether it’s exile from Israel or having to leave Europe after the Holocaust. . . It’s the concept of being almost in a liminal area: you’re not where you’ve gone, but you’re not where you are either.
At the beginning of the novel, Ilana is faced with an involuntary change of location.
Convinced that his love of the violin interfered with his schoolwork, his parents took a drastic step. He was sent to Prague to stay with the other artist in the family, Aunt Žofie. Actually, it’s not a vacation. If you don’t do well on upcoming SATs, you may turn to other music lessons. A close look at the life of a hungry artist is also part of the plan.
However, his parents miscalculated. Music is a non-negotiable component of Ilana’s life, in the author’s resolve to write the story in loose verse.
“At first, I started writing verses as a challenge for myself,” Romero said. “I’ve written poetry. Many fantasy novels for young adults are in verse. . . I was going to try. It has become an herbal format: poetry has so much musical quality, and Ilana is a musician.
Aunt Žofie when his niece arrives.
“I sought to give Ilana a positive adult ally,” Romero said, “someone who sees why art is so important to her, that she fought and ultimately survived. “
Meanwhile, Ilana is encouraged to explore beyond her aunt’s cabin. One day, on a walk, he discovers a forgotten Jewish cemetery.
Here, Romero draws on his real-life reports on the rehabilitation of Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe. In 2016, she became involved in this venture by fact-checking her latest mid-level novel “The Krakow Dollmaker,” which combined a narrative of the Holocaust with Europe. Folklore.
Through a Google search, Romero discovered a non-invasive archaeological task at Auschwitz. Romero ended up running the task for a week and returned to Eastern Europe every summer to pull out recovery paintings in other cemeteries. She helped cut the tall grass, adding the nettle common in Poland, while washing the faces of matzevot, or tombstones.
“It’s about honoring the dead,” he said. It is a kindness that in Judaism we call helping the dead. “
The amount of paintings you want to make varies from one position to another.
“Some cemeteries are almost completely intact,” Romero said. Czechostowa is certainly beautiful. Many sites show wear and tear of a hundred or 150 years.
He noted that “Jewish cemeteries have become the sites of Nazi executions,” adding that this was a tragic irony because those cemeteries were originally located “on the outskirts of the city, in the hills, to avoid violence. “
The war in Ukraine has suspended rehabilitation projects, as many are in Ukraine and Poland.
In the book, while Ilana cleans the matzevot from the cemetery, she thinks so, until she meets Benjamin, who temporarily makes an impact.
A romance blossoms, with the help of evening walks around the city. Although Benjamin comes from a vanished world, he points out a family story that resonates with Ilana.
“It’s easy for any of the characters to fall in love,” Romero said. “They have a lot in common: problems they had with their parents, art, being kind and empathetic to other people with a lot of compassion for the world around them. “”
It doesn’t hurt that Benjamin has Prague as a place to showcase Ilana. He remembers his own emotions of wonder when he visited the city as a teenager with his sister. His memories of the city include the Kafka Museum and the art scene.
“It’s such a lovely city,” Romero said. I tried to bring it to readers who have never been there and possibly would never go, to allow them to be there for a few seconds, if only in their imagination. “
Still, a disturbing aspect of enchantment. Ilana learns that Benjamin lives in a space with the ghosts of other Jewish children. His obvious father is a mysterious figure named Rudolph Wassermann. Rudolph shows an inordinate interest in Ilana’s musical ability and indicates that he can stay in Prague and continue his romance with her. Benjamin.
As readers of intelligent ghost stories know, this agreement comes with caveats. There are already signs that Rudolph is not what it turns out to be: after all, he does not cast shadows. Suffice it to say that Romero encouraged to create his character after reading a popular thread on Twitter and finding the spirits of Czech rivers.
“It wasn’t until I discovered the bad guy that the whole story fell into place,” Romero said.
With Rudolph, “I sought to overthrow the myth of the blood libel,” he explained. “This is the monster that particularly feeds on Jewish children, devouring them even after they die. “
Although Prague has a tragic history since the Holocaust, the Jewish ghosts in the novel date back to an earlier era: the post-World War I era, when the Spanish flu pandemic ravaged the world.
“I sought to explore other eras of twentieth-century Jewish life in Prague,” Romero said.
The Spanish flu has become strangely applicable a century after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was something added when I made adjustments in the fall of 2020,” Romero said. “That was the peak of the pandemic, before the vaccine. “
And yet, he describes “The Ghosts of Rose Hill” as something that transcends time.
“It’s timeless, even if it’s going through those days,” Romero said. “You can read 10 years ago or 10 years from now. It is the clash between not pleasing her parents and opening her own path, and falling in love for the first time, with the young heroine, who is in a real war against a monster that has deceived her.
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