Grab a copy of Jessamyn Hope’s debut novel

IN A NUTSHELL

• Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope (Fig Tree Books, 2015)
• In 40 words or less: An array of seekers volunteer at a kibbutz in the throes of change. The kibbutz’s elder holds tight to 50 year-old secrets as the community she created crumbles. A young, troubled New Yorker arrives desperate for redemption.
• Genre: Fiction
• Locale: Primarily Israel
• Time: 1994
• Read this if you enjoy complex characters dealing with the life choices they have made. The plot lines are enhanced by the detailed descriptions of kibbutz life which were under great upheaval at that time.  Fig Tree Books is a new press and this is a beautifully put together paperback. It would be a great discussion title.

A confession. I was given advance access to this wonderful book in April. Life happened and I didn’t finish before my electronic copy disappeared. The story so grabbed me that this was the book I bought when I reached Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, NC. An excellent decision.

Adam is a mess. Drug addicted and bereft after the death of the grandfather who raised him, he assaults a jeweler and escapes New York for Israel, his goal to fulfill his grandfather’s lifelong wish and deliver an antique brooch. With this inauspicious start, he is not the ideal volunteer for Kibbutz Sadot Hadar. He hopes to quickly locate Dagmar, his grandfather’s true love, and get on with his life.

Times are tough in the kibbutz.  Young people are moving away, the original Socialist Zionist principles are falling by the wayside. Without volunteers and workers from the neighboring Arab villages, the kibbutz’s survival is in jeopardy. Ziva, the last remaining founder, is insistent that the original path is the only true path for Sadot Hadar. And she will devote every last breath to have that as her legacy.

Volunteers have come to Sadot Hadar from the unlikeliest of places. Ulya, a survivor of Chernobyl, sees the kibbutz as a way station on her path to New York.   Claudette arrives from Quebec, her OCD and Catholic faith complicating her acclimation to the kibbutz. She is on a personal pilgrimage with an unknown destination. Subject to assignment by Eyal, the kibbutz secretary, they all remain on the periphery of the controversy about the future of the kibbutz. Ofir, a talented teenage musician on the kibbutz and their only peer contact, was badly injured in a terrorist bus attack.

Adam’s quest propels the story. His dealings with both the bureaucracies trying to locate Dagmar and the rules of the kibbutz test his commitment. Throughout the book he is challenged to heal physically and emotionally, and that can’t happen alone. Only through the actions of others is a richer portrait of life on the kibbutz and Adam’s challenges seen. From a historical standpoint, Jessamyn Hope captures the kibbutz movement at the crossroads. The changes that Ziva works to stave off were occurring across Israel and marked a dramatic shift in the country’s social and economic history.

Grounded in 1994 but with clearly delineated departures to the past, Jessamyn Hope weaves a novel filled with life’s successes and missteps. For each of the characters family, or the absence thereof, helps set his/her path. Each is broken and sees Sadot Hadar as a step on the road to redemption. This is a wonderfully crafted debut novel and I look forward to reading more from Jessamyn Hope in the future.

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