Linda Press Wulf could have drawn on her own life for her first novel. Instead, for “The Night of the Burning: Devorah’s Story” she fictionalized the life of her late mother-in-law, a woman she never met.
Geared toward young readers, the novel tells the story of sisters Devorah and Nechama, who survive a brutal pogrom in post-World War I Poland. Later a Jewish South African philanthropist (based on real-life hero Isaac Ochberg) brings them to a Jewish orphanage in South Africa. But their joy is cut short when the two are sent to live with different families.
“Shtetl stories are my world,” says the Berkeley-based writer, whose grandmother immigrated to South Africa from Lithuania. “It seems almost alive to me, and to Jews like me. It was almost like writing what I do know.”
Wulf will be on hand Sunday, Sept. 10, to sign copies of her book at Afikomen, a Judaica store in Berkeley.
The novel, which has already won two literary awards, was inspired by the experiences of Wulf’s late mother-in-law, Devorah Lehrman. Although she and her real-life sister were much younger than the fictional characters, Wulf says she couldn’t write for that age group because “it would be hard for young children to read it.” In fact, in its earliest draft, the book was intended for adult readers.
“Nine- to 13-year-olds are the youngest you can tell the story of these Jewish horrors, or any kind of horrors actually,” says Wulf of her target audience.
In one early scene, a Cossack murders the sisters’ aunt, who screams at the soldier, “Don’t kill the children!.”
The real-life Devorah and Nechama both died of breast cancer in their 60s, after a lifelong difficult relationship.
“At Nechama’s funeral, Devorah broke away from her three children and started running after the hearse, screaming, ‘They’re taking her away from me, they’re taking her away from me,'” she says. “They had no idea at the depth of emotion between them.”
A native of Johannesburg, Wulf was a voracious reader as a child. But the gauzy world of “Anne of Green Gables” was soon overshadowed by the reality of apartheid.
“It was a soul-twisting experience,” she recalls, “even for whites. On a visit to Harvard years later I wept when I witnessed black students ascending the stage in graduation gowns.”
Wulf later headed a program pairing white university tutors with black high-school students. But ultimately, sickened by apartheid, she left South Africa for U.C. Berkeley in 1979.
“I thought it was going to be this liberal place with students demonstrating in the streets,” she says. “But just as I arrived, the Bank of America branch near campus was removing the wooden boards from their windows. I thought, ‘I missed the show!'”
Wulf completed her teacher’s credential before moving to Toronto to become an editor at the Canadian magazine Macmillan’s. From there, she moved to Israel where she met her husband-to-be, Stanley Wulf, also from South Africa.
“Neither one of us wanted to marry another South African,” she says. “But we got engaged a few weeks after.” The couple settled in Berkeley. They have two sons and are longtime members of Berkeley Congregation Beth Israel.
Though the Holocaust has proven one of the most covered themes in Jewish fiction, Wulf chose to explore an earlier era.
“The First World War has always been very interesting to me,” she says, “but it’s been eclipsed in people’s minds by the Second World War. Millions and millions of people died. It doesn’t lose its importance just because World War II is so well known and so well studied.”
As good an idea as she believed she had, landing a book deal proved difficult. “I had bookshelves which sagged in the middle from peoples’ rejections,” she says, “but I was determined to finish this. I just kept going, and if I could do it after 14 years then that gives hope to other people. If they keep pushing, they too can get to the end of this long road.”
Next up for Wulf is a novel about the last days of South African apartheid.
Wulf says being a working author is a dream come true, if not always glamorous. “If I stood at the checkout counters and people asked, ‘How’s your book going?,’ I’d say, ‘Slowly, but thanks for asking.'”
Neal Ross contributed to this story.
Linda Wulf will appear 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10, at Afikomen Jewish Books and Gifts, 3042 Claremont Ave., Berkeley.
“The Night of the Burning” by Linda Press Wulf ($16, Farrar Strauss Giroux, 207 pages).