I was so happy to get to talk about Kantika with author and podcaster G.P. Gottleib. She’s a wonderfully appreciative and perceptive reader, and she gave me the chance toward the end of the podcast to focus on the character of Luna, who was inspired by my wonderful aunt, Luna Leibowitz. Luna was born in 1927 in New York City to an immigrant Sephardic family. Her birthmother tragically died in childbirth a few years later, along with her newborn baby. In 1934, my grandmother Rebecca became Luna’s stepmother after she had an arranged marriage to my grandfather—Luna’s father—Sam, bringing into the marriage her own two children, who’d lost their father. They were a blended immigrant family with a history of deep loss. Over the duration, they formed deep bonds as well. In the photo above, taken at Jones Beach, Luna is on the far right, next to her stepbrother Albert. Rebecca sits in the center holding baby Suzanne (my mom!), with her son David to her left.

I won’t give away too much to readers who haven’t read the novel, but suffice it to say that Luna plays a vital part in the book, both in her own right as a smart, angry, passionate, full-of-life, disabled girl struggling to find her way in a world full of prejudice, and in terms of her relationship to Rebecca, who is both key to Luna becoming mobile and the source of a lot of tension. In real life, my Aunt Luna led an active and full life. She married twice, had a child, and worked in municipal jobs for the City of New York. She took up writing in her retirement in Florida, focusing on the retirement and disability communities there, as well as, occasionally, on her own childhood. She regularly published articles published in the newspaper The Sun Sentinel, realizing her lifelong dream to become a published writer (see this link to a story she wrote on retirees and dance fever!).

Luna sadly died before I started writing Kantika. She always followed my path as a writer with great interest. I wish she’d had a chance to tell her own full story, and I hope she would have given her blessing to my portrait of her in my book. May her memory be a blessing.

You can listen to my conversation with G.P. Gottleib here.