The Book Woman's Daughter: A Novel Novels & Stories

"That's exactly what you said. Don't regret this." ... The ballroom was warm and loud when I pushed through the heavy doors. Chandeliers blazed overhead. Father's cigar smoke curled toward the ceiling. They were celebrating—Bianca's confirmation as Blackwell heir, her takeover of the East Coast operations starting Monday. My arrival dropped the temperature in the room. Mother stood at the head table, champagne flute in hand. Her smile cracked when she saw me. "Gemma?" She set down the glass. Her hand landed on my drenched shoulder, light as dusting off a coat. "You're soaking. Why didn't you call ahead?"

A woman laughing. I glanced up. "What's going on?" Mia shifted the baby higher on her shoulder and went to the window. "Apparently some man from the north has been passing through town," she said. "Paying debts. Settling disputes. Handing money to people who need it." I lowered my eyes to the baby in my lap. "Sounds like gossip." "Maybe." She glanced back at me. "Still, half the neighborhood is outside trying to get a look at him."

Hadn't been anything but a shadow locked away, passed from cruelty to cruelty, treated like property instead of a daughter. A tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it. She wiped it away quickly, afraid even the walls might report her weakness. The file was returned to its place, untouched after that. She continued cleaning, until the room was nearly perfect again. That was when she noticed the books. A neat stack of novels sat on a side table, unexpected, out of place in a room built for control and order. Curiosity tugged at her despite herself. She reached out and picked one up, running her fingers over the worn spine.

About the woman who had left his house with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pregnancy and the absolute certainty that staying was not survivable. About the woman who had raised a daughter alone in a kitchen with cracked yellow tiles and a window that never closed properly and chamomile tea and a warning that she had planted in that daughter before the daughter could walk. About the woman who had watched that daughter build an empire from a folding table. About the woman who had sat across from a man in her kitchen and watched him sign a document that threatened everything he owned and had heard the laugh that followed and had filed it in the place where she filed things she intende

Hearing Swati's question, the woman further said, "I don't know who that woman was. She came in my dreams only once. She told me that her name was Nitya and it was she who had brought that girl there in that novel. Therefore, i should not kill her otherwise the girl will also die along with her. Then I let the novel continue as it was. But there came a place where the mother of that girl was needed in the novel, so in her place I wrote the name of the same woman who had come in my dream." Swati was shocked to hear what the woman told her. He did not expect that someone else would be behind her entry into novels. The person who sent her the novel is none other than her mother. This means she

Anger took over—the anger of a mother protecting her child. “Get away from my daughter!” the Woman screamed. She didn’t reach for the pen. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of white-out—the liquid that erases mistakes—and dumped it over the officer’s black ink on the notebook. Then she scooped up Maya and Julian in one hand and the notebook in the other. She ran for the window. “Where are we going?” Julian shouted, clinging to the Woman’s thumb. “Out of the book!” the Woman cried. They reached the window, but the officer was already there. He didn’t look human anymore. His skin peeled away, revealing layers of shredded paper and black ink. He was a monster, made from Deleted Scenes.

“I have to admit, the title intrigues me. I’m very familiar with the story of Purim, of course, and I’ve done a great deal of research on Vashti, but there are absolutely no references to her ever having a daughter, not in the megillah, or any midrash I’ve been able to find. While I believe you have a unique niche market in Jewish historical fiction, we’re really not the right publishing house for the novel. We don’t publish religious genre, I’m sorry.” With Anna’s comment, Nate’s raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Anna, I think we may be talking about a different book. Vashti’s Daughter isn’t a novel. It’s a factual account of events that occurred in the years after Vashti was banished from

Most importantly, most foundationally, irreducibly — with herself. The woman who had been a guest in her own life and was now its undisputed primary inhabitant. Who had found herself in the fire. Who had written herself down. Who had put her name on it. She thought about the woman at four in the morning who had not been able to put the book down. About the woman who had called her sister. About the woman who had called the lawyer. About the hundreds of women who had written today and the thousands who would write in the weeks and months to come as the book found its way to the people who needed it.

She had wondered privately if the stink of the city alone could coerce her to follow her husband’s command to stay indoors, though she considered it highly unlikely. As she had paused to examine the books lining the shelves, the faint beginnings of her good humour had fled. The titles on the spines leered down at her, the jagged lettering contriving rotten faces of their own. Woman and Sin, they read. The Keeping of a Good Wife. Accomplishments Acceptable in the Female Gender.