First published 2022
Chava is made of clay. She walks through crowded Manhattan streets hearing the wants and worries of every person she passes, pulled by her nature to help them all. Ahmad is made of fire, a jinni who once ranged freely across desert skies and now wears the shape of a man like a borrowed coat. Both of them are hiding. Discovery means ruin. Their lives are bound together, but what they are to each other remains unresolved. Meanwhile the world around them keeps moving. A Park Avenue heiress named Sophia Winston carries a strange, shivering cold in her body, a souvenir of her encounter with Ahmad, and travels to the Middle East searching for relief. On the Lower East Side, a rabbi's daughter named Kreindel helps her father build a golem named Yossele, not yet knowing she is about to lose everything. The story tracks all of them across the years from the turn of the twentieth century to the outbreak of World War I, as their paths cross and press against each other. Chava and Ahmad must decide whether two beings of opposing natures can hold together when the human world is pulling them in separate directions.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, adult-fiction, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, haunting, introspective, lyrical, melancholic
Tropes: found-family, magical-realism, opposing-natures, star-crossed-lovers
Setting: Manhattan, New York, Lower East Side, Park Avenue, Middle East
Period: Turn of the twentieth century, Early 1900s, World War I era
469 pages · Paperback · Harper Perennial
Content warnings: death