covid Archives - Jeanne Blasberg

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Where were you four years ago? COVID in the rearview (and the writing)

March 22nd, 2024/0 Comments

Four years ago this month, our nation shut down with the onset of the COVID pandemic. Thinking back on those days still elicits painful memories of confusion, disruption, and terrible loss. We each have unique stories of how COVID impacted our lives. The first half of 2020 irreversibly changed my outlook. I became fixated on our world’s fragility and brokenness, feelings that led to selling our family home in Boston and investing in farmland among other things.

My desk in the pantry, guarding the food and close to the coffeemaker. Also, Brady and Churro kept me company (furry friends bottom left).

But mid-March of 2020, before those personal shifts were set in motion, I was hunkering down in our pantry while the rest of my family staked claim to more private workstations, and threw myself into drafting the manuscript that would eventually become Daughter of a Promise.

It was inevitable that the storyline would coincide with COVID. How could it not? One early draft practically read like a diary of domestic insanity including tracking down n-95 masks, washing off groceries, and wearing rubber gloves to get the mail. I knew of authors whose manuscripts were drafted or were in the publishing queue during big world or political events, leading to the question of how to address them. When I equivocated, an author friend reminded me:

“It’s our job to document the blood in the streets.”

Several in the publishing industry warned against it, saying readers would not have an appetite for revisiting those years. Nevertheless, I sensed COVID would play a major role in my novel from the onset. Stories exist, after all, to help us make sense of what’s happened. Perhaps returning to those days in a character’s shoes makes it easier to process. What do you think? Given that three of my favorite novelists recently came out with books incorporating COVID puts me in good company:

Daughter of a Promise will pub in less than two weeks!! I’m dropping teaser videos like the one above on #trailertuesday, follow my Instagram to not miss any!

A full schedule of live events is on my website, but my first three stops will be:

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU!!

Daughter of a Promise, Coming April 2024, Preorder Now

Writing Daughter of a Promise, a Biblical Retelling

March 5th, 2024/0 Comments

This essay was originally published on Women Writers, Women’s Books.

Some people assume writing a third novel must be easier than writing the first, which is true to some degree only because one knows what to expect: that they are in for a long, winding, doubt-ridden journey. When I began drafting Daughter of a Promise I wasn’t sure what the challenges would be, only confident there would be plenty.

It was the winter of 2020, and I was promoting The Nine and working on this new novel, when COVID hit. I began writing with more rigor, mostly to preserve my sanity. My thinking at the time was if I was going to be stuck in this house with my husband and grown children, it would be nice if something came of it.

Daughter of a Promise Book Cover, a biblical retelling It’s probably not a surprise that the plot of Daughter of a Promise collides with COVID, just as I was experiencing the same. The final drafts of the manuscript contained about thirty-thousand words too many and as I poured over the third act looking for sections to cut, I was confronted with the vivid details of those early pandemic days, almost as if I’d included a domestic journal. Although much of that was eliminated, the novel brings back memories of the desperation we were all feeling at the time.

After completing a first draft during the winter of 2021, I applied and was accepted to the Southampton Writers Conference BookEnds fellowship where a dozen writers take a year to revise, rewrite, and polish their work. We were assigned to pods of three where, for six months, we workshopped each other’s revisions, keeping in mind the general prescription from the faculty for each book’s re-write. The process of giving and receiving feedback from two other writers with whom I shared synchronistic themes and sensibilities was wonderful.

The feedback I received in our initial meeting was twofold: 1) the story, as I had written it, was being revealed in the wrong order and 2) successful retellings tend to use a “light touch.” You see, just as with my first two novels, Daughter of a Promise is a modern retelling, this time of the tale of David and Bathsheba from the Book of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible.

During the second half of the year, I was assigned a BookEnds mentor, a successful author with whom I worked exclusively. My mentor was Scott Chesire, author of As High as the Horses’ Bridles which is also full of biblical retelling references. Our mission was to figure out the “why” of my novel and how it should begin.

“Why” was it imperative that my (first person) protagonist, Betsabé, tell this story at this particular point in time. Instead of addressing my pages specifically, Scott had me read the first chapters of dozens of works that were written in the first person and in our weekly phone calls we discussed them as well as my admiration of slightly unreliable narrators. Not that Betsabé turned out remarkably unreliable, but she justified past decisions and questioned her memory.

I redrafted my biblical retelling as a letter from Betsabé to her unborn son, Sol. She writes in the retrospective to the second child she conceives with David. In the bible, Solomon carries the mantle of wisdom with the implication being he received this wisdom from GOD, whereas my novel makes the case his wisdom was passed down from his mother.

Daughter of a Promise, by Jeanne Blasberg, a powerful and tender coming of age w Betsabé writes of a tumultuous year, graduating from college, starting a job on Wall Street, and falling in love with her powerful boss. While the onset of the COVID would provide convenient subterfuge for her affair with David, it would also usher in the undoing of so much more. Ultimately Betsabé is broken open and forced to trust her own innate wisdom and the teachings of her family.

People often ask why I like to cast stories from the bible in contemporary settings. I hope to illustrate how biblical narratives speak timeless truths of the human condition. A powerful king, a young beauty …. from my first reading, I viewed the tale of David and Bathsheba as entirely modern. For centuries the rabbis have debated whether the couple came together in a consensual manner. Whether they did or they didn’t, the bible’s telling is relative to David’s life. Bathsheba’s feelings are not addressed at all.

I needed to write Daughter of a Promise to give her a voice. My Betsabé is a strong young woman trying to find her place in the world, trying to balance the teachings of her family back home in Miami with all she is learning during her analyst training program at the bank.

She trying out versions of feminism that feel right to her, and she is falling in love. She is falling in love with a city, with a best friend in her roommate, and with a powerful, handsome man. Yes, she makes some questionable decisions but ultimately becoming aware of why one made those choices breeds wisdom.

—

Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. Her novel The Nine (SWP 2019) was honored with the 2019 Foreword Indies Gold Award in Thriller & Suspense and the Gold Medal and Juror’s Choice in the 2019 National Indie Excellence Awards. Eden (SWP 2017), her debut, won the Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her forthcoming novel, Daughter of a Promise (SWP, April 2, 2024) is a modern retelling of the legend of David and Bathsheba, completing the thematic trilogy she began with Eden and The Nine.

Jeanne cochairs the board of the Boston Book Festival and serves on the Executive Committee of GrubStreet, one of the country’s preeminent creative writing centers. Jeanne was named a Southampton Writer’s Conference BookEnds Fellow in April 2021. She reviews contemporary fiction for the New York Journal of Books, When not in New England, she splits her time between Park City, UT, and growing organic vegetables in Verona, Wisconsin.

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A Quest for Quiet and the Ability to Live in it

March 3rd, 2021/0 Comments

This essay was originally published on Medium.com.

My husband and I are on a road trip this winter. With freedom heralded in by an empty nest and working from home, we loaded the car on New Year’s Day and began driving west. We’re keeping to ourselves, preparing and eating our meals in hotel rooms, and doing everything possible to stay safe and remain socially distanced from others. The destination was Colorado Springs where we bought some serious snow tires for our car and then headed into the San Juan mountains.

Of all the things chilling me out in Colorado, the biggest has been its soundtrack: quiet. Spending an extended period of time in a remote town, I couldn’t help thinking about noise, or the lack thereof. Here, people drive slowly and they don’t honk. I haven’t heard one big truck straining uphill, one motorcycle revving at a red light, one lawnmower or leaf blower. Instead, as I walk the dogs I’m accompanied by the sound of a river flowing around moss covered boulders, of wind through the pines, of my boots crunching atop dry, hard-packed snow, the tinkle of the dogs’ tags, and sometimes their low growl warning of someone’s approach.

Maybe I’m just a sensitive creature, possibly even bordering on Sensory Processing Disorder, but I’ve always resented loud noise and its imposition. You see, I grew up in a household with many televisions. Nothing big and high tech — it was the mid ’70s and early ’80s and we had about six channels to choose from. Our TVs had antennae, no cable hook ups, and small, rounded monitors relative to their chunky plastic casings. We had an RCA color set that held a place of prominence in the family room and a couple little portable black and whites my mother would stow on her bathroom counter or by the kitchen sink. She puttered through the house to the sound of the Today show, Bob Barker and the Price is Right, and an afternoon marathon of soap operas. At 5pm, the local news announced it was time to start making dinner (and socially acceptable to pour a first glass of wine). Later when we got cable, my father kept a TV on his desk with the monotone voice of news and markets keeping him informed.

Maybe a background of TV voices was my mother’s antidote to loneliness, or a preference for the voices on TV over her own internal chatter. Maybe it was even a way of manifesting prosperity to those who entered our home — after all, her generation clung to the memory of which families on the block were the first to purchase those shiny new things called TVs. Whatever her motivations, those transistors made an imprint one me. As soon as I became the master of my own domain and later a parent of young children, I put a value on silence, on peace, and on being careful to not disturb others. And no gratuitous television. My children would not have to compete with Al Roker to be heard before leaving for school in the morning.

I first became really aware of my sensitivity to sound when my husband and children and I moved to Switzerland. In Zurich, there are laws against making noise on Sundays and in the middle of the day (like a nationwide observance of nap time) to the extent one could be fined for running a washing machine or cutting one’s grass. It seemed a little over-reaching when we first arrived, but I quickly became a fan. Just as with my time in Colorado, I appreciated the silence like the missing ingredient I had been searching for all along. And when we returned to Boston, I noticed with even more acuity how much sound is thrown into the atmosphere.

Some of this noise is unavoidable: lawn mowers, snow blowers, construction, the byproducts of industrialized life. But there are also car stereos that blast bass to the point of vibrating the street, Harleys designed to let everyone within a mile know you’re accelerating, and those little pocket-computers we call smart phones, some of which don’t seem to come with a mute button. I’ll readily admit to being sensitive. But when my husband suggested I purchase an expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones as a cure, I thought of my mother-in-law who, at the end of her life, opted to stick with her malfunctioning hearing aids, admitting to me she was happier in a cocoon of quiet. Not really the solution I was looking for. We live in a world, for better or worse, where quiet is a rare commodity and maybe its not just quiet I’m seeking…

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AT HOME before it was a thing…

November 25th, 2020/0 Comments

This essay was originally published on Medium.com.

For many women of my generation, kitchens are command central, the headquarters from which the multi-tasking happens. And as much as we love the warmth and nurturing sentiment the kitchen represents, let’s be honest: the work required to maintain the hearth can start to feel like a chore. Indeed, the home in general, as we move through it with the discerning eye of the woman of the house, starts to take on the dread of a to-do list rather than a place of respite.

“At home” always felt like one of those dismissive boxes on forms offered to those of us without alternative occupations. As the mother and manager of the family’s domestic space, I have checked it hundreds of times, but always with a pang, a belittling affront to my feminist instincts, the doleful tone of those words.

When we were living in Zurich about a decade ago, I made a friend who asked, “Du bist eine Haus frau?” No!! I wanted to scream I am most definitely not a Haus frau, but my German was not good enough to describe what I considered myself. And when you got right down to it, I guess I was a Haus frau. Got to love the Swiss for being direct.

Well one thing I can say to the multitudes of stir-crazy people nine months into this home-boundedness is welcome to my world. Not so easy to keep it all going, is it? This is for all of us who WFH before WFH was a thing. If you’re like me, you’re chuckling that “home” has taken on a whole new importance. Home has been elevated in people’s esteem. The real estate market is on fire with people wanting to trade up into optimal spaces for work, schooling, relaxing. The old spaces were fine when it was just us and the kids, but now that certain people are home all the time, upgrades are in order!! A friend’s husband declared this summer that the wallpaper was driving him crazy — the same wallpaper he had lived with for twenty years. This sentiment has lit up not only the housing market but the renovating and decorating industries as well.

My management consultant husband is delighted to no longer board planes or sleep in hotels. He is delighted to dine on home cooking. But with our kids all out of college, this was the time I was planning to be free from the bondage of our address, the constant upkeep and list-making it takes to run a home. I didn’t want a home gym or different wallpaper; I wanted to hit the road.

But as COVID would have it, I had to settle for the next best thing, scrolling through photos and memories. There was a trip to the Himalayas…

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Literary Community: The Silver Lining of the COVID Era

October 7th, 2020/0 Comments

I finally had a hair appointment and while the grey is back under control and the cut is cute and bouncy, the best thing about the appointment was somewhat unexpected. The act of reclining back toward the sink to have my hair shampooed brought on a state of near ecstasy I hadn’t anticipated. It wasn’t just the perfect water temperature; it was the caress and massage of another’s hands on my scalp. I have always enjoyed that part of the process, but it’s possible at a pace of every 6-8 weeks over the past twenty years, I had begun to take it for granted. Gloved hands working the soap through my hair made it perfectly safe for both of us (of course that was first thing that went through my mind before I could relax into the experience.) But then it was all about another’s fingers spreading and applying pressure to a head that had been reeling, fretting, aching.

To be touched. It is a primal human need. I’ve gone six months turtling into my shell, shrinking back when others come too close, my circumference of acceptable personal space swollen and awkward. That shampoo was a Godsend. I know what I have been missing and what might have me come alive again.

Since that afternoon, I’ve been wondering what will be the occasion and who will be the recipient of my first ungloved handshake once this has subsided, in the new-normal? It probably won’t be planned or foreseen, but I hope it elicits the same awareness I had while my hair was being shampooed and rinsed. As opposed to never knowing when an interaction with somebody or something is going to be your last, I look forward to being aware of that first. I vow to be grateful for human touch and the generosity and connection it exhibits. May I never take that for granted again.

But even as my hair grew unruly and turned its natural color while at home, some things became more accessible in the virtual world, including literary events. Of course, they are always more fun in person, but never before did I have the option to attend one every day in locales near and far. Like a kid in a candy store, I binged on them in April and May, doing my best to support authors who had the shit luck of launching a book during the pandemic. I found new favorites and ordered books from Bookshop.org to keep indies in business.

literary-community-during-covid-family-watching-computer copy The summer months brought more events, and I was able to drag family members along in ways I never was able to before. While working on a jigsaw puzzle, my son and I tuned into a Sarah Broom and Thelma Golden in discussion about THE YELLOW HOUSE through the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival. Our local bookstore featured Colson Whitehead’s discussion of THE NICKLE BOYS and THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD and while my adult children went on about their business preparing dinner in the kitchen, they stopped and listened—and then actually read all of Whitehead’s work. I binged on Europa Edition’s worldwide panel discussions of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series, the Boston Book Festival’s event with Ella Berthoud, who streamed in from the UK to prescribe her NOVEL CURE.

I’ve also taken many classes and attended writing conferences, thanks to Grub Street, The Southampton Writers Conference, Brooke Warner of She Writes Press, and Mary Carroll Moore. What’s more, I taught my first fiction workshop, an 8 week generative class on Monday evenings through the Westerly Writers Workshop and the Ocean Community YMCA. What used to be an infrequent respite from a busy life has become a weekly pleasure, filling in the distance between us and the encircling arms of friends.

jeanne-blaserbg-at-computer-for-literary-event And I am not alone. If you are a book lover or lifelong learner, I’m sure you have had similar experiences. If you want a few tips – please know it is Book Festival Season. I am biased toward the Boston Book Festival, but the Brooklyn Book Festival and the National Book Festival are also coming up with events open to all online.

We are at a strange moment in time, with technology making our world smaller and more accessible even as world events balloon the distance between us. But don’t take it for granted. Indulge now because the pendulum is sure to swing once more.

Even as I look forward to that first handshake, the next shampoo, the opportunity to hug friends outside my bubble close once more, this communion with fellow book lovers is a different kind of needed touch. For now, may I take as much pleasure in the brief caress of each literary event as I did in that simple moment at the salon.

Graced by the Hummingbird: Sylvia Plath’s Legacy

August 27th, 2020/0 Comments

This essay originally appeared on Medium.com.

I propped my head on pillows this morning, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. Still early, I picked up The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and finished it in one last gulp. It’s a classic I rued not already having read, if not for its importance in the cannon of feminist literature, then for its ties to my alma mater, Smith College.

COVID has provided time to address several gaps in my education and I was pulled to Sylvia after references kept popping up in contemporary work. In My Dark Vanessa, Small Fry, The Dollhouse, there she was again and again, a signpost pointing to what to read next. When synchronicities appear, I generally pay attention.

With the rain still falling and a grey morning unfolding, I splayed my copy of The Bell Jar across my chest and felt grateful to have waited the thirty-five years post Smith to read it. Back then, it would have given me even greater reason to despair.

***

John and I had no idea in 2012 when we bought the land and built that house that we would be positioned in the midst of incredible bird life. The osprey nest should have been our first clue, but there are also gulls, swans and herons and duck and geese that flock around us. Last fall bald eagles perched on our pilings. Hawks glide above and I worry sometimes about the puppies alone in the yard. There are swallows feasting on swarms of insects and now hummingbirds sparring for position on the feeders filled with “Perky Pet” nectar aka hummingbird crack. There are red cardinals and yellow goldfinch. The gulls drop fish and crabs on the lawn which the dogs like to scavenge.

This summer, while addressing further gaps in my education, I was reminded our house sits on land inhabited by the Eastern Niantic. Chief Ninigret may have knelt in the spot that is now our yard and peered across the Pawcatuck River to the land of the Pequot and Mohegan. His tribe named this land Misquamicut, the place of plentiful red fish. Misquamicut is also the name of the state beach where people flocked during this summer’s heat, not wearing masks, and the name of our country club.

***

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932 and graduated from Smith College in 1955. She was the beneficiary of a scholarship from the Smith College Club of Wellesley. She died in England in 1963, the same year The Bell Jar was published. Sylvia married Ted Hughes on Bloomsday, June 16. From what I have read, their marriage was troubled early on.

My great-grandmother, Florence Durgin attended Smith College between 1895 and 1897, and then as if our birthright, three generations would follow. Sylvia was sandwiched in between my mother and my grandmother, as a student and later as an instructor in the English department between 1957–1958.

Although my DNA did not physically overlap with Sylvia’s, the mood conveyed in The Bell Jar certainly did. Struck by her description of Esther Greenwood’s mental state, I recognized the darkness that creeped into my chest while living in Northampton. It was a loneliness, probably not unlike what most young people feel when first away from home, but it was exacerbated by the lack of typical college-age distractions and a feeling I did not fit in. There was just me and the work and an uncertain future looming in the distance. Immersed in athletics, I spent many hours inside my head. When I starved myself in an attempt to exert some control, my father said he would pay my tuition only if I kept a standing appointment with a psychiatrist. So I showed up dutifully at the health center once a week where a nurse inquired as to whether I might be pregnant, did I need any birth control?

***

We have a pair of binoculars in the kitchen with which to watch the osprey traverse from their nest among a small outcropping of rocks in the river to a grove of trees across the cove. Bass are plentiful and in summers when they have mouths to feed, we listened to the babies cry for more. The babies will be kicked out of the nest before summer’s end and I wonder if they know what is coming, if they worry about their prospects in the world. How they know where to go?…

Continue reading Jeannie’s reflections on Sylvia Plath here.

Reopening (Our Hearts) After COVID

June 30th, 2020/0 Comments

This post was originally published on Medium.com.

My children are my best teachers. Having been in quarantine, in isolation, and cohabitating with them now for what is going on four months, I truly appreciate their perspective and ability to suspend judgment over what has been a very difficult period. My son was quick to evoke “The Parable of the Horse” early on and it has been a good reminder as we have moved forward, doing our best with what life is handing us.

The old Taoist story goes something like this:

An old farmer worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Who knows what is good and what is bad,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Who knows what is good and what is bad,” replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Who knows what is good and what is bad,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Who knows what is good and what is bad,” said the farmer.

The lesson is that assigning meaning to everything that happens to us just invites suffering. It’s better to suspend judgment until we know (that’s assuming we’ll ever really know) what there really is to be thankful for and what is inconsequential.

Sometime in March, while my sons were abandoning their apartments and offices and my daughter was leaving her college campus, I heard Bill Gates say that he believed there was a spiritual reason in the universe for why things unfold as they do. That made me pause. I wouldn’t have expected a statement like that to come from him…