I woke up today to find this beautiful response to Kantika from Justina Elias, a bookseller and young writer at Munro Books in Victoria, British Columbia, who posted it on her Instagram account:

Rebecca Cohen is a seamstress who will come to wear many names: one from her father, two from marriage, another from her work in 1920s Barcelona, where to flaunt Jewish ancestry is to court disaster. Hers is a life sewn from scraps, her privileged family in Istanbul torn apart by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe. Yet there is joy in piecing together a new story, one she shares with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, whose fictionalized account of her family’s journey to America is a tribute to the resilience of Sephardic women and the regenerative power of art. A lusty novel harmonizing pain and laughter, Kantika lives up to the Ladino word that gives it its name: ‘song.’

I looked up Munro Books, hoping it might actually be the bookstore that Alice Munro—who, perhaps more than any other writer, got me started writing in my twenties through her astounding stories—started with her husband Jim Munro, and it is. The current location of the store looks gorgeous—high ceilings, frescoes, light—and the thought of the Kantika finding its way there and into Justina’s hands is a gift on this chilly New England Friday in November.  Writing this book has been a long journey, and publishing it is yet another one. Off we go!