Sometimes I’m asked how long it takes to
write a book. I usually reply that there’s
no good estimate. When that doesn’t
satisfy, I joke that it’s like a pregnancy, no less than eight months, no more
than nine. I don’t mention “Lilli,” the novel that took me 26 years to complete and still isn’t
published.
In 1990 a convention of Old China Hands,
Jewish refugees from Hitler who had survived the Shanghai ghetto, was held in a
hotel in Anaheim, California. I lived
nearby, so out of curiosity I attended one of the public events. It was a raucous, joyously emotional
gathering, lots of tears and laughter and reminiscences. The personal stories were overwhelming. I was hooked.
Over the following months I met and interviewed twelve survivors and taped
their stories of escape from Europe and the life-altering drama of existence in
the Shanghai ghetto. Among the people I
interviewed was a man in his late seventies who was living in a condo in Leisure
World in Orange County; he had been a classical violinist in Europe and ended
up leading a jazz band in Shanghai. Another one was an insurance executive I
interviewed in his office in Los Angeles; he had spent his youth in Shanghai
and was curious as to why anyone would want to know anything about it. Another was a woman in her sixties who agreed
to meet me at a café in the Northridge Mall; she told me about a childhood in
Shanghai that still caused her nightmares.
Another was an elderly woman and her daughter who met me for lunch in
Marina del Rey and after a slow, awkward beginning, told me about their escape
from Hitler and what their lives had been like in Shanghai. There were more interviews. Even a letter from a man in Australia. I soon had a drawer full of interview
tapes.
I knew several things about the book before
I started: it would be a novel; it would hew close to the
information I had gleaned from survivors; it would be about how people survive
calamitous events and whether they survive honorably or by betraying others; it
would be an adult novel that could also be read by teenage readers, for at the
novel’s heart would be the young Lilli Chernofsky and her stunning
metamorphosis from sheltered
seventeen-year-old to complex heroine.
By 1997 the novel (then titled “Escape
to Shanghai”) was finished. I gave it to
my agent. She didn’t want to represent a
book about Jews or the Holocaust or World War II. I changed agents. Several tried to find a publisher for the
book, but with no success.
I contacted Spielberg’s Shoah Project
and asked if they would like to add the taped interviews to their collection. They said they only used interviews for the
Shoah Project that they themselves conducted.
I put the book and the tapes in a
drawer.
It’s now 2016. A few months ago I pulled “Escape to Shanghai”
out of the drawer, did some revising and retitled it “Lilli.” I had fired my
last agent, so I decided to personally contact a few editors I had had dealings
with in the past: one had made an offer
on “Escape to Shanghai” several years ago, which I had refused because the publisher
had only been in business a short time; two others had bought and published
other novels of mine. All three agreed
to read “Lilli” and give me an answer as to publication.
So I’ll wait for an answer, although it
doesn’t matter what the editors’ responses are.
Somehow, some way, somewhere “Lilli” will be published. It’s a startlingly valuable look at a people
and time and place in Jewish history that’s been given scant attention up to
now. I made a promise to the survivors I met and interviewed that I would
write a book about their experiences. Despite the years
that have passed, I don’t intend to renege on that promise.
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