, 4111•11•MIIMM, Arts & Entertainment 0 N HE COVER Paradise Found Be a princess in the kitchen, learn the secrets of a TV star, hear the truth about the Supreme Court justices and spend the evening with the man who assured you that despite your troubles, the sun will come out tomorrow ... Welcome to the 2008 Jewish Book Fair! Elizabeth Applebaum RICK LAX Special to the Jewish News N 710 )..ta Diseoverfour Timer Wisdom - BREAKING NEWS thilWritiffIER ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES RNA GALCHEN = FSG SAY NU SCOTTSBORO IT'S ONLY TEMPORARY EVAN HANDLER T.STE04... n. btfNN 1 N t E VN ECRONt.. MI* NNE ct • Why Fail)) Nilatters N\ ()I PI.' ircess cookbook vish prin the Gorg e • e ie. 'Dm Tracey Fine: )1114 o cherubs with dainty wings, no endless tables with fruit and sumptuous cheeses. No blue mountains surrounding misty lakes where lilies float on sweet water. No rainbows. Paradise, said author Jorge Luis Borges, is like a library, with row after row of books. Welcome to paradise. The Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit's 57th annual Jewish Book Fair, chaired by Gail Fisher and Amy Hammer, will be held Nov. 5-16. "This year's Book Fair features a vast array of subjects and includes authors from all over the world;' says the event's director, Heidi Budaj. "Each author's story is fascinating and unique. We will feature literary journeys to war zones, to the Israeli army, to Kurdish Iraq, to an affluent world that no longer exists on the Upper West Side of New York, to flights of imagina- tion that take us to new worlds and journeys that will have us look at ourselves and our values in a new light:' Among this year's guests is Oprah favorite and leading novelist Chris Bohjalian, whose Skeletons at the Feast was inspired by an actual diary. It tells the story of German refu- gees who flee westward from the Russians while, in a parallel story, Jewish prisoners are forced west in a march from a Nazi death camp. The diary belonged to a friend of Bohjalian's, who asked him to take a look. "Usually when someone asks a novelist to read the 'family diary: the writer's reaction is a sort of desperate, anything- but-that fear," Bohjalian said. "Most family diaries are about as interesting as toast because most diarists aren't Anne Frank. But this was a very good friend who had made the request — our daughters had been buddies since birth — and so I said sure:' In 1998 Bohjalian was handed a book, "about 175 typed pages, all single space." It told this story: "In January 1945, the diarist decided to take her daughters and walk west, hoping to stay ahead of the Soviet army and somehow reach the British and American lines. The section that chronicled the journey wasn't very long — maybe eight or nine pages — but it was riveting. The trek was always gru- eling and often terrifying," Bohjalian said. He was fascinated "because the person writing the entries had been my friend's grandmother; that 16-year-old girl who was nearly raped by Russian soldiers was his mother; the chil- dren trudging west in the cold and the ice and subsisting in April and May on dandelions were his aunts. "Nevertheless, it didn't cross my mind in 1998 that there Xi I I might be a novel somewhere in those pages. After all, at the time I was focused on novels about the cultural margins that were set in the present — books such as Midwives and Before Oprah Book Club (for Midwives) author Chris Bohjalian based his latest novel, Skeletons at the Feast, on a family diary given to him by a friend. You Know Kindness and The Buffalo Soldier. may also have lacked the confidence to tackle material of such profound historical importance as the Holocaust and the average person's complicity. I wasn't old enough or gray enough." When at last he did begin the book, the writing itself was invigorating, said Bohjalian (now in his late 40s and of partially Armenian descent) "because I was so passionate about the mate- rial. But sometimes the research left me a little staggered. I would find myself emotionally drained and moved to the point of tears by the stories that survivors would tell me. I would be sitting in a res- taurant or a living room or at a kitchen table; and I would be listen- ing, and suddenly I would feel the color draining from my face. "And yet it wasn't simply the unspeakable cruelties these indi- viduals had endured and all they had lost. It was also the seem- ing normalcy of their lives now — how they had raised their children and had their careers and built their families. It was poignant and powerful and inspirational." In addition to writing, Chris Bohjalian is an avid gardener, bicycle rider and fan of the New York Mets. He will be the fea- tured speaker for Book Fair's Hadassah Luncheon on Tuesday, Nov. 11. For a list including this and other Book Fair Special Events, see page B14. ❑ Elizabeth Applebaum is a marketing specialist at the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit. The Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit's 57th annual Jewish Book Fair runs Nov. 5-16. See the following stories in the A&E section for more in-depth author and event information. All events are open to the public and free unless otherwise noted and will be held at both the JCC in West Bloomfield (WB) and in Oak Park (OP). To view the complete brochure, visit www.jccdet.org . For more information, call (248) 661-1000 (WB) or (248) 967-4030 (OP). Staff photo by Angie Baan October 30 • 2008 B13