WOMS: The Light of the Midnight Stars

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Though I should be sharing my review of Evie Dunmore’s most recent League of Extraordinary Women installment, Portrait of a Scotsman, because today is Erev Purim, I’ve decided to instead share something a bit more Jewish—Rena Rossner’s The Light of the Midnight Stars.

This book review is a bit more personal to me because I’ve heard Rena speak publicly at a symposium before, met her, and even got her autograph. She’s a rare jewel of a woman, and I admire her probably a little too much in that creepy fan sort of way. (Sorry, Rena.)

ANYWAY…

Like Purim—which is a holiday centered around the story of how Queen Esther stopped the evil Haman from annihilating and murdering all the Jews within the Persian Empire—Rena’s story is about a magical Jewish family who escapes persecution and fights for survival in an increasingly antisemitic world. There’s even a Jewish Queen, too.

The Light of the Midnight Stars is difficult to describe, to review, because I cannot choose between wanting to discuss the content of the story or the beautiful way Rena writes. It’s also difficult because I have no idea how or where to start to discuss the content.

How do you begin to describe the weight of centuries of bloodshed and persecution and horror intricately woven into this book?

When I first sat down to read The Light of the Midnight Stars, I had this premonition, so I shared on Instagram, “Why do I get the sense the moment I open this book, my heart is going to be ripped out and meticulously sewn back together over the course of reading it?”

That is exactly how I would describe this book.

My rabbi frequently talks about how life is a journey, comparing everything to it from movies to books to jokes. Sure, it can be annoying, but that’s his role, to provoke me to seek truth even in the mundane. I say all this because I cannot begin to articulate the journey that is this book, so anything I attempt would just be a summarization of the events and would not capture even a drop of the essence of it.

This book is undeniably, unapologetically Jewish. It is centered around Jewish life, themes, and stories.

This book is magic.

What I can say is that for Jewish people, bring a lot of tissues along; for non-Jewish people, take the time to sit with this story, to experience the atrocities described in its pages, to imagine how you would feel if you were treated thusly just for being…different. I know some of you are. Then, after you’ve finished, consider how some of what you read still exists in our world today because it does, and maybe go so far as to think of what you can do to make a change, to be the change.

I think what strikes me most about this book as I recollect it, especially today on Erev Purim, is the hiddenness of both stories. Esther had to hide her Jewish identity to protect herself, revealing it only to save her people. So, too, does the Solomonar family hide their identities through assimilation, but eventually the twin boys of the sister Levana/Laptitza, thought to have been killed, reveal the truth to the voivode, of how his wife murdered their mother and tried to murder them as well. What’s more poignant in Rena’s tale is how the voivode is aghast saying,

‘I formed Wallachia as a free and independent state for all people. All are welcome here. How can this have happened under my own roof?'”

Rena Rossner The Light of the Midnight Stars, p. 369

It echoes the moment when Esther reveals herself to the king, declaring Haman as a the enemy who would destroy them. The king in his fury leaves the banquet, but returns to find Haman prostrate before Esther, a rather compromising position.

‘Does he mean,’ cried the king, ‘to ravish the queen in my own palace?’”

Esther 7:8

I could keep making other connections between Esther and The Light of the Midnight Stars, but for the sake of time and getting to bake hamantaschen today, I won’t. Knowing the miniscule bit I do about Rena, I would assume she had the story of Esther, amongst others, in mind whenever she wrote Midnight Stars. She intricately weaves her tales with the history of her people—layer upon layer, thread above thread, through her loom—so it does not surprise me in the least if she did.

The eloquence with which she writes is like an artist who deftly uses their brushstrokes to highlight the hue of sunlight in their muse’s golden curls. She paints her words onto the page.

Where her first book read like a fairy tale, full of shimmers of hope amidst the darkness, this second novel left the fairy tale behind to plunge into the depths of despair associated with the centuries of antisemitism—the persecution, the assimilation for protection, the loss, and the death.

Though it ends with the rebirth of a new generation, which would restore the legacy of the family, it comes at a great cost. The bitter sweet poignancy with how she juxtaposes the sorrow and joy in the novel’s final chapters is too strong to articulate.

I think it daring for her to write this, albeit even risky, but to me she succeeded in creating a story which carries with it the weight of centuries of loss in a people’s search for hope.

I will warn you, this makes it a difficult read, but it is a worthy one. It will have you questioning your own self in the way only a good book can, and I encourage you to take the journey with the Solomonar Sisters and share in their trials as they fight for a place in this world. So many of us are still fighting today for our right to exist, Jew and non-Jew alike.

Let this story speak for itself; let it speak to you of our shared humanity.

It is within these shared experiences we find our hope, we know we are not alone. It is in these places of darkness we find our light, like the stars shining in the depths of a midnight sky. It is here where magic lives.

As I have said before, and will probably keep saying until I read someone more worthy, doubtfully—when I grow up, I want to write like Rena Rossner.

Have you read it Rena’s latest book? What did you think? What journey did it take you on? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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