Libi Astaire
Why is Libi Astaire, author of the Jewish Regency Mystery Series, so interested in English history and literature? I've wondered about this for most of my life, because there's no obvious answer to the mystery. As a Jewish girl growing up in Kansas, with family roots in Eastern Europe, there didn't seem to be a family connection to explain my interest. But there it was.
Example 1: One of my earliest memories is of staring at the end pages of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court. Depicted on the page was a line of Crusaders on horseback, with banners flying. I couldn't read yet, so I didn't bother with Twain's story. Instead, I made up my own. I did the same with chess pieces, a game I still haven't learned to play.
Example 2: I'm still at the preschool age. Although my family lived in a comfortable 1960s-style suburban home--complete with big windows and wall-to-wall carpeting--where was my favorite room to play with my dolls and paper dolls? The unfinished basement. There was something about that dark and damp place that made me feel at home.
Example 3: I was a bit older and in my room playing when I heard "strange music" coming from the den. Mesmerized, I went to see what it was. The TV program was about well-known ghost stories, whether they were real or not, and this segment was about a ghostly monastery in England that was destroyed during the time of Henry VIII. The music was a Gregorian Chant. Did I mention I was Jewish? Did I mention I grew up in Kansas? Why on earth should I be mesmerized by a Gregorian chant?
I was a teenager the first time I traveled to England. At my first castle, I looked around at the grey walls, breathed in the damp air, and smiled. I was home!
Needless to say, my bookshelf was very British: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy - I couldn't get enough of the English classics. I loved Shakespeare and John Keats as well. For lighter reading material I turned to Agatha Christie.
But why?
Looking back at my "clues," my first thought was that perhaps I had lived in England during the time of the Crusades. Perhaps I had perished along with other Jews during the burning of the tower in York in 1190. Or perhaps I was one of the Jews exiled from England in 1290. But that didn't explain my interest in just about every period of English history--the Tudors, the Regency, the Victorian and Edwardian eras, even the days of the "Angry Young Men."
I later learned that my paternal grandfather and lived in England for a few years in the early 1900s, while on his way from Kiev to Kansas. According to family legend, my maternal grandfather was supposed to sail on the Titanic (steerage class) for the last leg of getting from Vilna to New York, but he got delayed and missed the boat. (Although we think there's more legend than truth in that last story). Did either one of them leave behind some unfinished business in London, which has become my business to resolve? If so, how should I go about doing it?
Sometimes it seems that the only way to find out is to write a mystery novel, and follow the character's search for the missing link in her life's story. In the process, maybe I'll find mine.
Example 1: One of my earliest memories is of staring at the end pages of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court. Depicted on the page was a line of Crusaders on horseback, with banners flying. I couldn't read yet, so I didn't bother with Twain's story. Instead, I made up my own. I did the same with chess pieces, a game I still haven't learned to play.
Example 2: I'm still at the preschool age. Although my family lived in a comfortable 1960s-style suburban home--complete with big windows and wall-to-wall carpeting--where was my favorite room to play with my dolls and paper dolls? The unfinished basement. There was something about that dark and damp place that made me feel at home.
Example 3: I was a bit older and in my room playing when I heard "strange music" coming from the den. Mesmerized, I went to see what it was. The TV program was about well-known ghost stories, whether they were real or not, and this segment was about a ghostly monastery in England that was destroyed during the time of Henry VIII. The music was a Gregorian Chant. Did I mention I was Jewish? Did I mention I grew up in Kansas? Why on earth should I be mesmerized by a Gregorian chant?
I was a teenager the first time I traveled to England. At my first castle, I looked around at the grey walls, breathed in the damp air, and smiled. I was home!
Needless to say, my bookshelf was very British: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy - I couldn't get enough of the English classics. I loved Shakespeare and John Keats as well. For lighter reading material I turned to Agatha Christie.
But why?
Looking back at my "clues," my first thought was that perhaps I had lived in England during the time of the Crusades. Perhaps I had perished along with other Jews during the burning of the tower in York in 1190. Or perhaps I was one of the Jews exiled from England in 1290. But that didn't explain my interest in just about every period of English history--the Tudors, the Regency, the Victorian and Edwardian eras, even the days of the "Angry Young Men."
I later learned that my paternal grandfather and lived in England for a few years in the early 1900s, while on his way from Kiev to Kansas. According to family legend, my maternal grandfather was supposed to sail on the Titanic (steerage class) for the last leg of getting from Vilna to New York, but he got delayed and missed the boat. (Although we think there's more legend than truth in that last story). Did either one of them leave behind some unfinished business in London, which has become my business to resolve? If so, how should I go about doing it?
Sometimes it seems that the only way to find out is to write a mystery novel, and follow the character's search for the missing link in her life's story. In the process, maybe I'll find mine.
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