Barbara Stark Niemann (2:42)

Thank you, Khaleeda. It's a pleasure to be here.

G.P. Gottlieb (2:45)

So I read in your acknowledgments that the idea of Isabella's Way came to you on a bike ride from Portugal to the Alhambra in Guerrero out of Spain. Can you say more about that?

Barbara Stark Niemann (2:56)

Sure. Both my other novels were stories that were already in my head and major portions of the novels were based on true stories. This novel came to me on a bike ride. I was. It was a warrior woman bike ride from Portugal to Spain. And we had just climbed very early in the morning to a Celtic standing stone circle and the sun was rising. And the myth is that your ancestors would come to you as the sun rose, looking east toward a mountain which we would have to climb the next day. And sure enough, this girl came to me on the bike ride down from there. I do have family that came from Abranch, Portugal to Hamburg, Germany between the time of 1580s and 1640s. So I felt like this was my ancestors reaching out to me. And this 14 year old embroiderist just came kind of fully formed, jumped into my head. That was in 2011. But I had one novel that I was writing at that point and another one in the Pike. So I told Isabella to wait and she did.

G.P. Gottlieb (4:26)

Very lovely of her. So this ancestor who was born in Abrantes, Portugal in 1586 and died in Hamburg, Germany in 1655, what did you learn about that person and who do you know who it was?

Barbara Stark Niemann (4:45)

My great grandfather. This is my grandmother's father. My maternal grandmother's father was an armchair genealogist and he had done a significant amount of genealogy about his wife. My great grandmother's family. They were Yeshuruns, which was and is a very prominent Portuguese Jewish name and family. And so I kind of took during, especially during COVID when I couldn't do the kind of travel that I always do to research my novels. I had done it before, I did it after Covid, but during COVID I really went down deep into the rabbit hole of ancestry and I discovered my based on my great grandfather's family tree. I worked backward from his work and actually found my ancestor that was born in the branch Portugal in 1586 and then died in Hamburg. So I found that link and I created my character who is totally fictional, but I created my character around that knowledge.

G.P. Gottlieb (6:06)

So can you briefly describe the Edict of expulsion in 1492 that resulted in the massive movement of Jews into Portugal and remind everybody about the goals of the Inquisition that caused the problems you describe in the book?

Barbara Stark Niemann (6:25)

So there are various theories about why the Inquisition was which frankly existed way back in the 13th century. So this was not the beginning of the Inquisition, but this edict of expulsion that happened in 1492 was part of what many political and historical theorists say was an opportunity for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to unite their lands of Spain to create a kingdom and power that would allow them to really rule over the Iberian Peninsula. And so Isabella in particular was a very devout Catholic. And so the trick was to get everyone who was not Catholic out of the country or converted. So the edict said, you either convert to Catholicism or you leave or you die. Basically, that was the deal. And many people converted, many people became devout Catholics, many people converted and continued to practice their Judaism. And mind you, this was not just Jews, this was Jews, this was Muslims. At that time, Protestants were not in the Iberian Peninsula, but eventually this became an issue for Protestants as well. And so the people who decided, decided that they wanted to leave. A great number moved right over the border between Spain. It's a long border, if you think about your map of the Iberian Peninsula. They simply moved over the border into Portugal because the Portuguese, as you may remember 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But the Portuguese were very interested in. In exploration and in trade. They were less interested in imposing the Inquisition because they wanted the resources of the Muslims and the Jews and their educational and navigational skills and business skills to advance their economic and their exploration goals. So for the next hundred years, there was kind of a look the other way attitude in many places, not all, but in many places in Portugal, in small pockets where converted in name only Jews could kind of hide out in Portugal. And that's what many did until a marriage between a Portuguese prince. Innisfilm Spanish Princess resulted in a very brief period and the only period in which the Portuguese came under Spanish rule. And with that connection with that marriage, the deal was, we'll do this marriage and we'll make this happen if you allow the more strict inquisitional rules to come into Portugal.

G.P. Gottlieb (9:55)

So the stories in your novel, which takes place a century after the expulsion, the initial expulsion in 1492, now the church wants to keep the new Christians close rather than losing their labor and capital. So that is based on what actually happened.

Barbara Stark Niemann (10:12)

Yeah, and it was a tricky deal because it also changed from ruler to ruler and from situation to situation. So the. The sense of instability, of never quite knowing where you were economically or politically or what your relationship was to the Church. That was part of what made that time so fraught.

G.P. Gottlieb (10:37)

So some of your characters are Christians who help form this network that conducts persecuted new Christians out of Portugal. Probably Also Spain. Did you find evidence of such a network during your research? And how successful were they in addition to your own family getting out?

Barbara Stark Niemann (10:59)

So I looked for evidence in the early 17th century of kind of that underground railroad kind of network that I posited happened and that I created in my novel. And honestly, I looked really deeply, long and hard and could not find the land version of that. In other words, from Portugal, through Spain, into France and into Germany. However, in the century before that, there was an extraordinary woman, Donna Gracia Nasi, who was a businesswoman who took. Her husband died and she took his substantial fortune and did exactly that. She did it right after the expulsion. And she created such a network not to go to Germany or not to go to Amsterdam. Those were two of the freer cities. But the third one was Venice. And she did create a network to bring Jews to and conversos or people who been converted to Venice and they were accepted, they were allowed to live there, they were allowed to prosper until they weren't. And then she went from there. She took a whole community to Constantinople because the Muslims did allow Jews to exist and to thrive in Constantinople until they didn't. And eventually she gets the story.

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G.P. Gottlieb (14:36)

What kind of research were you able to do in Girona? It's a town in Spain that I visited a few years ago and they were very proud of their former Jewish pride presence. And there's a lot of Jewish tourism that they could say, and here's where Jews lived. And we could tell because of the indentations in the archways to the doors. But do they have archives of the Jews there who were forcibly converted or expelled?

Barbara Stark Niemann (15:03)

There are records and this was an example of something that we found all over the Iberian Peninsula. There are very few Jews who live there, but there is a big history and it's become a tourist issue. In other words, people with Jewish heritage want to visit these places and see, you know, in Jonah, you can see a restored area that was a synagogue and, you know, a ritual bath, and you can see these different things. But there are no vibrant Jewish communities in these small towns. What you see is the legacy of the way of the legacy of the expulsion, essentially. How do you feel about that?

G.P. Gottlieb (15:54)

I had feelings about Spain making money on Jewish tourism, showing where there were once Jews that no longer exist.

Barbara Stark Niemann (16:04)

You know, there's no question that there is a tourism thing. And as a person with Sephardic background, I really cared about that. I wanted to see there, I wanted to be there, I wanted to see that evidence and the nascent Jewish communities. And I've got to say that, you know, some of the Chabads in Spain are very active. And I mean, I don't want to get into the whole politics of what's going on in the world, but they're. There are a lot of people who are looking at Europe as a possible safe haven for Jews who never would have looked at that before. And I think that. I mean, I hear and identify with your concerns about it on the one hand. On the other hand, it is a history. And rather than having it totally wiped out, I'm glad that there's at least the evidence there.

G.P. Gottlieb (17:06)

That is a good point. Let's talk about some of your characters. What can you say about how Isabella's embroidery contains secret messages?

Barbara Stark Niemann (17:16)

There's a really long history of women in particular, using embroidery to signal various secretive things in America. One of the most well known examples of that are the quilts that African American women did to designate routes for the underground railroad, designate safe houses and so forth. Mary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth because she was a threat to Elizabeth's sovereignty and she was a master embroiderer. And she embroidered gifts and items, banners and things to indicate her romantic interest in people, her political will to maintain her own sovereignty even though she was. Was imprisoned, and to just simply indicate that she was there and she was staying there as long as she. As she could. So there's a long history of the use. And remember that this is a time in the early 17th century when people were not generally literate. So these symbols were easier for people to understand and absorb. And, you know, obviously we didn't have any technology at all. So it was. It was a very important form of communication.

G.P. Gottlieb (18:55)

And Isabella's father is a textile merchant. He leaves Portugal to conduct business. Can you talk about how that might have worked in the 17th century?

Barbara Stark Niemann (19:05)

So he clearly understood, as it becomes emergent throughout the book, that the Inquisition is increasingly going to be crushing the new Christian or conversal communities in these pockets of areas, like a branch that had been basically left alone to prosper, kind of under the radar. He understood that that wasn't going to be true anymore. So off he went to Hamburg, which was a major, major port. And in order to establish his textile business there and bring his family there to a safer, more plausible place for him to conduct his business. And this, like I said before, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, these were cities that were more tolerant of Jews settling first of all and then being able to conduct business. So that's why he went there.

G.P. Gottlieb (20:10)

David de Sousa is 18 years old. What does it mean for him to be responsible for the entire converso community in the town?

Barbara Stark Niemann (20:20)

This is something that really touched me in my research. His father and Isabella's mother both died from the plague within days of each other in the spring before my novel begins. And you know, we think of a 14 year old and 18 year olds now and it's very different than 14 and 18 year olds from the early 17th century. 18 year old is way into adulthood and he had a very wonderful father who was a leader of the new Christian community. So, so the municipalities and the church relied on the new Christian leadership. And that's where David's father, that's who David's father was and that who David took over from his father to tax people, to keep records of people and to basically keep the community in line. So it was a lot, little bit of a ghetto, but it was a ghetto that allowed people to conduct their business and so forth. So David was taking over from his father who passed away. And the same is true of 14 year old Isabella, whose mother had been conducting the embroidery business until she died in April, before the June that our.

G.P. Gottlieb (21:48)

Story starts, also of the play. So Barbara, I love that you began each chapter with a quick quote relevant to the chapter. My favorite one, it was hard to decide. But you have Maimonides, the 12th century Spanish philosopher who wrote that we are responsible for what we are. Can you talk about how you chose the quotes?

Barbara Stark Niemann (22:12)

That was one of the most serious tasks that I felt like I had. And some of them I came across as I was writing and some of them I chose afterward. And they are quotes that inspired me, that made me think about my own life and about my concepts about bravery, about loyalty, about faith, about finding allies, about facing terrible, you know, traumatic events and, and the resilience required, the, all of those thematic elements that were important in the book. And I just, I, I spent a long time searching for them and I'm glad that you enjoyed them.

G.P. Gottlieb (23:08)

Oh, I did. Can you tell me what are you working on next and will we ever see any of these characters again?

Barbara Stark Niemann (23:18)

It's funny that you should ask that. So I have decided I have several smaller projects that I've sort of put by the wayside, writing these novels that I'm going to be working on over the next year. But I've already gotten requests even from early readers for a sequel. While I'm thinking about it, I'm not committed to it. I also got a lot of requests for a sequel for my second book, which is not historical fiction. And so I'm thinking about that. But I am going to tidy up some smaller projects that I have. One of them is a cookbook from a wonderful cook. And I asked her to sit down with her personal cookbook and tell me the story of each recipe in it. So I'm putting that together, and that's sort of the next thing that's on my list.

G.P. Gottlieb (24:17)

That sounds beautiful. Thank you so much. Barbara Stark Niemann, it's been a pleasure talking to you, and I look forward to reading your coming books.

Barbara Stark Niemann (24:28)

Well, thank you, Khaleed. It's been a real pleasure and an honor to speak with you, and thank.

G.P. Gottlieb (24:34)

You for joining me again. This is G.P. gottlieb, author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery series and host for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Today, I've been talking to Barbara Stark Niemann about her new intriguing historical novel set in 17th century Europe. Hope you all have an intriguing book to cuddle up with today. And always happy reading. Sam.