Safekeeping

OK I get it, life is not all peaches and cream.  There is not always a happy ending in real life.  But, when you are reading a book, can't there be just a little bit of an suspension of disbelief???  Many times when you delve into a great novel, you are looking for that escape from all the real world problems and hoping that for these characters, in this one instance, this time there may be some chance for a different outcome.

Author, Jessamyn Hope has written just that type of novel.  Set in Israel during the peace talks of 1994, between Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin, Hope has written a wonderful multi layered story of life on a kibbutz.  taking the reader back to the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel and the beginning of kibbutzim, she has created characters than span the generations.

Together for one summer are six diverse people thrown together to work through their various problems and escape their pasts.  On Kibbutz Sadot Hadar their lives intersect and each plays off the others as they attempt to the trajectory they were on.  Adam, a young drug addict, trying to rectify his past crimes and honor his Holocaust refugee grandfather comes to the kibbutz to find a woman his grandfather loved fifty years before.  He is trying to track down the mystery woman and return a brooch to her for his grandfather, but she seems to elude him.   Also volunteering on the kibbutz are a few other lost souls trying to turn their lives around.  Ulya, an ambitious, Soviet emigre who wants to see New York City; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir the Israeli teenager who wants to escape to America and become a musician; and Ziva, the old Zionist Socialist firebrand who help found the kibbutz.

As we get to know each of the characters we learn about their background and how they ended up on the kibbutz and where they wish they were going.  Then we see how the interactions between people and the experiences that happen to them in every day life and dramatically change the course of their
plans.  In this novel you need to be careful you get attached to because just like in real life, things don't always end up  perfect and happy for everyone.  Just when you are routing for a character, they can take a downward spiral and change course and even if you are hoping they will straighten themselves out, just like a real friend, sometimes it seems they cannot save themselves.

The book is fascinating and keeps you glued to the page all the way through.  The characters are beautifully developed and as a reader you do begin to like and root for some and some you are not so attached to and hope maybe they will not succeed in their endeavours.   Jessamyn Hope also does a wonderful job with her description of the kibbutz and the lifestyle there.  She brings to life the idea of all for one and one for all spirit that was there at the beginning.  She also brings it full circle and shows how that atmosphere is not as important today as it was for the pioneers.

As the kibbutz goes through a vote to change from everyone working for the common good to a place where each is paid according to their position, Ziva, the original organizer of the kibbutz feels betrayed, "Greed egotism, corruption, have always won out in the end, always except...Here.  The kibbutz.  The kibbutz is the only long lasting, completely voluntary, socialist utopia in the world.  If you want to own a private home or SUV or climb a corporate ladder - fine, by all means, go ahead.  Move to Tel-Aviv.  Or New York.  London, Tokyo, Bombay.  Anywhere in the world.  But, please, leave this one small corner of the map alone."

Hope also describes the Jews escape from Germany and the refugees coming to Israel in historical detail.  She recreates the feelings they had as they developed the farms and planted the orchards and created community.  She recounts the feelings also as the United Nations voted to make Israel a state.

Jessamyn Hope has written a wonderful first novel that stays with you long after you have finished the last page.