Jessica Elisheva Emerson’s debut novel, “Olive Days,” is out now from Counterpoint. Set in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the story follows Rina Kirsch, a Modern Orthodox Jewish woman struggling with her faith and her marriage.

She recently took the Book Pages Q&A.

Q: Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

“Sabrina & Corina” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. I recommend it, I gift it, I evangelize it whenever I can. It is a gorgeous, funny, heartbreaking collection of stories that deal with three of my favorite subjects, from an own-voices, indigenous Latina perspective: the American West, identity, and sense of place.

Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

“Could Anything Be Worse,” Marilyn Hirsch’s picture book version of the classic Yiddish “house too full” story. Centered on a man who is frustrated living in a cramped, one-room home with his family, and his rabbi who has him slowly add things to the home (“bring the chickens inside,” “invite the cow in”, “does your wife have any relatives?”) and then slowly take them back out. At the end, the happy family cleans and polishes their home for Shabbat and finds a new peace and contentedness with each other. I loved having my parents read it to me over and over. Once I became a strong independent reader, the spooky, empowering, feminist “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” by Joan Aiken made an indelible impact…I’ve probably read it close to a hundred times.

Q: Is there a book you’re nervous to read?

Tim O’Brien’s final book, “America Fantastica.” I pre-ordered it last year, and it’s just been sitting in my TBR pile since it arrived. I read the first few pages hungrily and then set it back down. I was obsessed with Tim O’Brien’s books as a teenager, especially “The Nuclear Age,” and knowing it’s the last novel he’ll ever write makes me nervous to read it. Whether I love it or not, once it’s over it’s over, there will never be another Tim O’Brien.

Q: Can you recall a book that felt like it was written just for you (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?

“Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?” is the obvious choice, a beloved favorite that spoke directly to my demographic and moment in history. But I had the same sensation when reading Patrick DeWitt’s “The Sisters Brothers,” decidedly not about my demographic or moment in time: it’s a western about assassins and gold mining set in the 1850s. It’s a whip-smart page-turner, and as I read I kept saying to my husband, “I think I might be the biggest fan on earth of this book.” (Ego check: DeWitt has a great many fans.) That book is everything I want in a story in one breathtaking read.

Q: Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?

My bookshelves are loaded with literary fiction. I enjoy reading excellent writing at the sentence level, and I suppose I like stories best when they are sad, haunting, challenging, or ambitious in form. I also love westerns. I should probably read more fantasy. Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip Pullman, Susanna Clarke, and Cynthia Voigt wrote books that have been some of my most revelatory and enjoyable reads, yet I don’t often find myself exploring the genre.

Q: Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

So many teachers (my high school creative writing teacher who dressed up as Polonius and jumped up on top of his desk when excited!), librarians (in high school, my librarian gave me refuge), professors (the late Norman Corwin…), but of course I was made a reader on the laps of my parents.

As I grew they never restricted a book from me: if I picked it up off their shelf—at any age—whether my mom’s Russian lit books from college, or a Judith Krantz sex romp, they let me read it. They asked thoughtful questions. Sometimes they even picked it back up themselves.

When I read “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in third grade and threw a class party (you could choose your own book and then choose to make a diorama, throw a party, or write a report, that type of deal) I only served Sprite. Get it? Well, my classmates didn’t and I was crushed, but my parents—who never served soda at home—let us drink Sprite at dinner that night and talk about fairies.

Q: What’s something about your book that no one knows?

There’s a short segment in the middle of the book that’s based very loosely on a story my husband told me—about his own adolescence —early in our relationship. The book is wholly fictional and although I love to mine real-life anecdotes, there’s almost nothing in “Olive Days” lifted from my real life. So I was quite nervous to share with my husband that I was considering a fictionalized version of this particular experience. He was, as always, totally supportive and delightful.

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