LGK: Sometimes, I ask myself the same question. Seriously, I believe it is because I have so little time that I’m able to use whatever precious moments I have in the most effective way. I simply do not have the luxury of choice so I try to carve out time whenever and wherever I can. I carry around one of those old fashioned, bound (so that I’m not tempted to tear out the pages) black and white student composition books with me everywhere I go, jotting down ideas even if I can’t get to my computer.

CHJ: I understand that FIRST THE RAVEN is your first published book but that you’re keeping the very first one you wrote under wraps. Your reasons for doing so are common to many authors and I think it would help others if you shared your feeling about that with them. It will also be of interest to your readers.

LGK: Oftentimes, a writer brings too much “personal baggage” to a first novel. That’s not to say a first novel can’t be an author’s best work. On the contrary, there are some beautiful first novels out there. For myself, however, I came to realize that I had explored certain issues in my first novel that were better examined in another context. I found I was able to revisit these issues after some passage of time in a completely different novel with more depth and maturity.

CHJ: FIRST THE RAVEN is mostly told from a man’s point of view. It is unusual for women authors to attempt this kind of deep understanding of the other sex in their writing. How did you achieve that? What did you do to make the voice authentic? Did you have a male reader check it, “just in case?”

LGK: FIRST THE RAVEN is unusual for me in that I most often write in a female voice and from the female perspective. My other novels involve mother/daughter relationships. I was very hesitant to write from the male point of view, but somehow, I felt I could not explore the difficult feelings of loss in this story otherwise. I really wanted my readers to empathize with my main characters, Amir and Rosenberg, and felt I couldn’t do them justice in any other point of view. My husband, David, also my “gentle” reader of first drafts, was my barometer for whether the voices rang authentic.

CHJ: I was impressed by how germane FIRST THE RAVEN is to the geopolitics of 2002. Obviously you wrote this book long before 9/11. Can you explain how this amazing feat of timing came about?

LGK: There was no amazing feat of timing, just the concurrence and mystery of life at play here. My character, Amir, an Israeli ex-paratrooper fed up with war and terrorism, tries to find a new life, a safe haven in America. We as Americans now know after 9/11 that there are no safe havens, that hate and prejudice creep like cancer into every corner of the world. Maybe Americans can understand Amir a little better now, understand his fears, his feeling of impotency and powerlessness, his anger.

CHJ: Those who know my writing know that I am passionate about tolerance. This is one of the reasons I am so drawn to your work. Would you mind explaining a little about the Jewish vs. Jewish intolerance that your book touches on?

LGK: The little seeds of prejudice are everywhere, and intolerance isn’t confined to prejudice between groups of people, whether it be White and Black, Christian and Jew, Muslim and Hindu. I wanted to examine the painful rifts between secular Israelis and Jews and the Orthodox community as a way of showing that intolerance can rear its ugly head even within a particular group of people. FIRST THE RAVEN was my way of finding hope in bridging these rifts.

CHJ: You were born in Tel-Aviv. You grew up in Pennsylvania. Yet your book –set in Los Angeles – reads as if you know it intimately, as if you always lived here. What did you do to achieve this effect?

LGK: I’ve lived in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where the novel takes place, for about thirteen years. I think my extensive travels, including my time in Jerusalem and Europe, have made me sensitive to my surroundings, to certain nuances. I find that wherever I go, I seem to first make a sort of mental reckoning, a sensory inventory, which eventually translates into my writing.

CHJ: I am particularly interested in what is called grounding in a novel. I believe very few novels that are released use setting effectively. What advice could you give to writers about how they might approach this subject when writing their own fiction? Why do you think it is important for readers?

LGK: Grounding or setting is very important to a novel. I always wrestle, however, with how much of the setting to include. My philosophy is “less is more.” I want to give the reader as much grounding as she needs without overstating, without inundating the reader with too many facts. I believe in the intelligence of my reader, in her ability to use her imagination as a springboard. I don’t have to give her a blazing fire - just ignite the match.

CHJ: I know that you also love photography and other art forms. How do you think those interests effect your writing?

LGK: I’m sure my love of photography and art influence my writing. A story is also a snapshot, a moment in time. Just as a photographer frames her photo, deciding what to emphasize, what to exclude, so too a writer frames a story, giving it a particular perspective. I am very affected by my visual plane, and find peace in uncluttered, minimal horizons. Maybe that’s why I love the beach so much. It is the ultimate intersection of two pure planes – earth and sea.

CHJ: I love the detail in your work. Detail seems to dominate everything in FIRST THE RAVEN from grounding to characterization. Do you believe that there is anything a writer can do to develop a knack for this? If so, what?

LGK: It’s all in the details, but detail is a double-edged sword. Use it too much, the words are trite; use it too little, the reader is lost. You have to bring yourself into the equation, bring to the story what is fresh and moving. The same scene can be presented in a thousand ways depending on who is seeing it, what they are feeling at the time. Finding the right details is like being a good detective, not being satisfied with the obvious.

CHJ: Where did you get the idea for a novel about an old rabbi who performs funeral services and a young Israeli expatriate with a wayward daughter?

LGK: America continues to be a land of immigrants. I wanted to revisit the immigrant experience, the travails and joys of finding a new life, never quite leaving the old life behind, the difficulties of raising children in a new land where the child feels more at home than the parent. I see that everyday in my work at the Juvenile Court – parents and children who have lost their way, struggle with cultural acclimatization. I thought it would be interesting to explore these issues within the context of the small Israeli expatriate population in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

CHJ: I understand that you are already working on your next novel. What is it about?

LGK: I continue to write about the repercussions of loss in families. My novel WHEN SHE SLEEPS is a story about two half-sisters, one American, the other Vietnamese, who find each other after the Vietnam War by dreaming each other’s dreams. I’m currently working on a novel entitled ESTATES OF GRACE, a mother/daughter story about a fifteen year old who runs away to New York City to have MTV’s Carson Daly’s baby.

CHJ:  Well, that is quite a departure from FIRST THE RAVEN.  I expect that the world of publishing will be hearing much more from you.  Thank you for the time you have given to MyShelf.com and its readers.  Interested site visitors will also find my review of FIRST THE RAVEN on this site and I, of course, hope they will take a moment to read it for your book, for first published novel, is my favorite for 2002.

Authors of fiction rarely choose to tell a story because it is timely and that it especially true of fine literary fiction.  Somehow, First the Raven appears in print just when interest in its subject matter is high, precisely when its message is needed.

The characters in this lovely first novel by Leora G. Krygier are Israeli transplants on Los Angeles soil.  Their experiences in America are so germane to this moment in geopolitics it is difficult to imagine a more perfectly timed release.  It is as if this little volume was sent to us so that we might better understand not only the immigrant experience, but also that we might see Israeli divisions that we have never before observed—at least not up close and personal as this story presents them.

 The narrative centers on a journey of redemption for Amir that begins when he befriends Rosenberg, an elderly Holocaust survivor who he identifies with the Israeli politics that Amir was only too happy to leave behind.  Amir’s relationship with a wife he loves is unraveling and his daughter is entangled with the kind of legal and moral morass that every parent fears the most.  Amir longs for the freedom he once felt as a parachuter, feels a vague disease with his new home, a longing for his old.

Amir’s new friend is also emotionally detached from his wife and his son.  The two strangers come together in a small restaurant in a Jewish section of Los Angeles only because it is so popular they must share a table.  In spite of Amir’s reluctance to associate with the old Orthodox Jew, Amir slowly accommodates Rosenberg’s loneliness and in so doing finds someone who has just the right connections and character to help him through the explosions that he must face in the days ahead.

In turn, Amir’s virility, common sense and vulnerability combine to offer something the elderly Rabbi is not finding in his other relationships.  We see how differences can heal rather than divide, a very real lesson for today’s world.  Krygier tells this story with sensitivity and with a command of language not seen in many mainstream novels.  Consider this poetry in prose:

 “(Amir) remembered his first jump, looking up into the fullness of the canopy, its lined geometry, the softness of its membrane.  The flapping fabric was gossamer-thin, like a wing…”

 “….she flirted with him…with competence, as if she  were following her grandmother’s recipes for yeast cake-just a little but not too much.”

 “Through the peephole…he could still see her, sitting on the step, round, through the fisheye, as if she were floating in an amniotic sac.”

 “It was an altered sky, cloudless and mute, tinted with faint paper-white strokes.”

Part of the power of Krygier’s passages may be credited to experience.  She was born in Tel-Aviv and grew up in Philadelphia.  She now lives in Los Angeles, and descriptions of that city ground the work; there is not a city street or a vista out of place.  Her experience as a referee in the juvenile division of the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles also gives her first-person insight into the system that young offenders must confront when they stray.

First the Raven is the kind of story that gives us something to take away with us once we have turned its last page.  It may or may not change a readers’ perspective, but it certainly will give her comfort and confidence in the future.  It’s hard to imagine that we could ask more.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of " This is the Place."