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A historian and a historical novelist walk into a bar ...

Because the main characters in my “Rashi’s Daughters” trilogy are real, historical figures, the family of the great medieval Jewish scholar, readers are both concerned and curious about what is fact and what is fiction in my novels. This important consideration leads to a basic question: what is the difference between a historian and a historical novelist? Answer: the historian must be right, but the historical novelist cannot be wrong. In other words, as long as nobody can prove the fiction author is mistaken, she can write what she likes. Legally, you cannot libel the dead.

But the novelist must have some integrity. Obviously if forks weren’t invented until the 14th century, my 11th century characters can’t use them. Yet because nobody knows what my heroine did for a living, I felt free to make her a midwife. After all, we know there were many midwives in medieval France, and it’s not as if I made Rashi a midwife. The author must also be accurate about details such as what her character eat, how they dress, where they lived. And since I considered my characters sophisticated enough to gossip about local court politics, I insisted on ferreting out events and scandals that actually occurred in Champagne and Paris, as well as the names of the nobles and clerics involved.

What about legends? Certainly a novelist should weave legends into the story, excepting those that have been absolutely discredited. But the details should be authentic. For example, legends say that Rashi’s daughters were learned in a time when most women were forbidden to study the holy texts. So I had create realistic scenes in which their father first began to teach them, then decide what texts they’d study and how their husbands and communities would react to this breach of custom. Not everyone agrees that Rashi was a vintner, but when I chose to give him this profession, I became an expert on medieval winemaking.

Last but not least - if the author wants to write something with no evidence whatsoever, she owes it to her readers to inform them of this invention in an afterword or ‘note to readers’ at the novel’s conclusion.

Maggie's on Facebook

Recognizing the need to have a bigger presence on the internet now that “Book III – RACHEL” is coming out in six months, I finally joined Facebook And what a wild world Facebook is. Within a week I acquired 249 friends, not all of whom I know, from all over the country. Besides my personal page, I also set up a group page for my fans - at this point, all eleven of them. One of my big tasks is to let the other 238 ‘friends’ know about the fan group.

I also discovered a FB application called ‘Visual Bookshelf’ where readers discuss various books they own or have read. Lo and behold – there were pages there for each of my books, with lots of reviews and comments. Another big task for me is to let all those readers know about my fan group, while not getting too distracted sending virtual flowers to FB friends in order to save the rainforests.

And after that’s done I need to have profiles on Plaxo, Linkedin, Twitter and Google, plus a Squidoo lens [don’t ask]. Plus writing some guest posts on various book blogs. Now that the book is finished, the work begins.

Here she is - cover of RACHEL

I know you've all been waiting to see her and here she is: "Rashi's Daughters: Book III - RACHEL."

The artist is the Renaissance painter Titan and the painting is of Jewish princess, Salome.

Book III - RACHEL goes to production

Hallelujah! My editor at Plume has accepted my changes of her changes, and the manuscript for “Book III – RACHEL” is off to production with both a much-improved first chapter and a completely new scene at the end. A few Talmud scenes were trimmed to make them easier to follow; two of them were quite complicated, but I think my readers are up to them after experiencing the first two books. Here’s a detailed plot summary:

Rachel, the youngest daughter of medieval Jewish scholar, Salomon ben Isaac, is the most blessed of women. Born after his Talmud academy is established, she has never known the poverty that her two older sisters grew up with and she studies the sacred Jewish texts with an approbation that they had to fight for. A great beauty, she is her father's favorite and adored by her new husband, Eliezer, son of a wealthy merchant in Provence. Two children, a boy and a girl, quickly follow their marriage and her life looks to be one of scholarship, status, and comfort.

But Eliezer's father and brother die on a routine merchant journey, leaving him to support his family. No longer able to study full-time with Salomon, Eliezer must spend half the year traveling on business, leaving Rachel desperate to find a way to keep him in Troyes. With Troyes the site of the greatest commercial fairs in Europe, she decides on a new and risky occupation. She will become a clothier, to control each diverse step of the manufacture of luxury woolens from the wool off the sheep, weaving, fulling and dying – something that has not been done before.

Obstacle after obstacle confront her: death of a child, unwanted advances from the young Count of Champagne, her mother's death, and Eliezer's fascination with secular studies after discovering Arabic translations of Aristotle and Ptolemy in Spain. But suddenly all her problems pale when the marauders of the First Crusade massacre nearly the entire Jewish population of Germany and her beloved father has a stroke. Eliezer wants their family to move to the safety of Spain while Rachel is determined that they stay in France to help her family save the Troyes yeshiva, the only remnant of the great centers of Jewish learning in Europe.