In the summer of 1942, an army from the nation of Germania is driving across the rolling grasslands — the steppe — of eastern Europe between the Dnieper and Don rivers. The goal: reach another vast river known by some as the Volga and capture a strategically important city along its banks.
If this sounds like the campaign fought in southern Russia between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II, culminating in the epic battle of Stalingrad, there are some similarities. But in her inventive new novel, “The Book of Esther,” former Valley writer Emily Barton has built an alternate history in which a longstanding Jewish state, Khazaria, is fending off Germanic forces that seek not only to conquer their country but to destroy all Jews.
And to drive a narrative that combines elements of fantasy, adventure, biblical tales and Jewish legends, Barton has also borrowed from a famous story of medieval Europe. The heroine of her novel is 16-year-old Esther bat Josephus, a Jewish Joan of Arc who believes Khazaria’s leaders don’t grasp the full extent of Germania’s threat to the Jews. Esther decides she must fight for her country, even if doing so means bucking her father’s will and breaking every rule governing acceptable behavior for Khazar women.
Barton, who taught fiction writing at Smith College from 2013 to 2015, has also taken her novel’s title from a story in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament about a Persian girl, born with the name Hadassah but better known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and saves her people from genocide. That story serves a central role in the Jewish festival of Purim.
Barton’s own tale is a wild ride that includes mechanical horses, which run on gasoline but exhibit life-like habits and personalities; golems, oversize “men” made from clay and brought to life by magic; flying machines with flapping wings that are activated by a pedaling pilot; and werewolves, or volkelake.
The New York Times calls it “an imaginative, engrossing and entertaining storytelling tapestry …. Barton explores religious culture with remarkable warmth.”
In a recent phone interview from her home in Kingston, New York, Barton said “The Book of Esther” began about six years ago along very different lines. At one point, when she injured her wrist and couldn’t type, her husband, short-story writer and teacher Thomas Israel Hopkins, suggested she try writing (by hand) an action-based story as an exercise.
She’d also been thinking of the real Khazaria, a trading empire from roughly 650-950 A.D. that encompassed parts of modern-day Ukraine, southern Russia, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus region. Though some of the history is unknown, Barton noted, it’s generally believed many of the Khazars — or at least the ruling class — converted to Judaism in the 8th century.
“From there I just started trying to figure out how [Khazaria] might have progressed into the 20th century,” she said. “For example, the Khazars were expert horsemen, so it seemed a logical step that they would develop mechanical horses.”
Thinking along similar lines, she imagined the Khazar language as a mix of Hebrew, Yiddish and Turkish, and the novel is peppered with some of those words and phrases. Her imaginary land, much as the real one of 1,300 years ago, is also an ethnic crossroads, with Jews, Turks, Uyghurs, some Russians and other groups in its midst, including Karaites, a branch of Jews whom the main Khazar Jews view as heretics.
It’s a curious mélange of old and new: a world with telephones, modern warships and “aerocraft,” but one in which most people still get around on foot or horseback. Carrier pigeons are a common form of communication, and there are biblical overtones to day-to-day life: Esther’s beloved adopted brother, Itakh, is officially her family’s slave.
Given the novel contains just fleeting references to what we know as modern Europe and its past, the sense of a different reality is maintained. “The Book of Esther” does include a helpful map of this world to add some perspective (best name: Turkey is called “Ottomania”).
Conjuring different worlds isn’t new for Barton. Her first novel, “The Testament of Yves Gundron,” was set partly in an unnamed country and moved between seemingly medieval and modern settings. “Brookland,” published in 2006, takes place in late 18th- and early 19th-century Brooklyn, New York. Among the latter novel’s many fans was the New York Review of Books, which called it “a carefully researched and vividly imagined reconstruction of a vanished world.”
But Barton says “The Book of Esther,” despite its imaginary setting, was inspired in part by more contemporary events — particularly what she calls “this weird and growing outpouring of anti-Semitism” taking place in many parts of the world.
And she sees the character of Esther in part as a response to the argument advanced in certain quarters, such as by some gun advocates and conservative politicians in the U.S., that European Jews didn’t do enough to resist the Nazis and the Holocaust.
“I think there’s still a pretty narrow cultural view of Jews,” she said. “We have trouble envisioning a Jewish hero.”
Esther may be an unlikely heroine, but she’s a spirited and likeable one, prey to the sudden mood swings of many adolescents. She’s the daughter of one of Khazaria’s leading officials, and her father expects her obedience; part of that involves her impending, arranged marriage to the future chief rabbi. Yet Esther defies her father by secretly visiting a Jewish refugee camp outside the family’s home, in the city of Atil. Hearing the stories of these European Jews, who have fled from Germania’s army, she comes to realize the full scope of the enemy threat.
Esther and Itakh then take off across the steppe on a moody mechanical horse, Seleme, in search of a fabled village of kabbalists — magical Jews — who she hopes can turn her into a man so that she can become a warrior and lead an army against Germanii forces.
In that village, she also meets Amit, a young religious scholar her age who alternately perplexes and attracts her. Like many 16-year-olds, Esther is wrestling with growing sexual feelings, and she sometimes has a hard time dealing with negiah, the law of Orthodox Jews that forbids unrelated women and men from touching one another.
At one point, Esther impulsively kisses Amit and presses against him; after he kisses her back, she says “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that.”
She pleasurably recalls the incident later that evening, more rebellious teenager than warrior: “The joy of transgression kept her alert.”
For all its drama, strangeness and thoughtful examination of Jewish beliefs and practices, “The Book of Esther” also has numerous bursts of this kind of sudden humor, as when a small group of Uyghurs — the Uyghurs control the region’s oil supply — corner Esther and Itakh on the steppe.
They dress in black, wear pointy-toed boots, and ride tricked-out mechanical horses: Khazaria’s version of a motorcycle gang.
And when Esther returns to Atil with a ragtag army of golems, Khazar volunteers and Uyghur mercenaries, she tries to find a way past one of the city’s guards. A conversation between one of the golems and the guard goes badly: “Twice [the golem] explained that they came on a peaceful mission … The guard said something about the golem’s mother and an elephant.”
Whether the Khazars can prevail against the more modern Germanii army isn’t clear. But as Esther sees it, the resolve to win is there: “Khazaria would fight until its final person died fighting. That was how they had held this territory for the last thousand years.”
Barton, who returns to the Valley next week, looks back fondly on her time teaching at Smith and living in Northampton, saying it was a very productive time for her and a good experience for her family.
“It really gave me the time and the mental state to finish the book. Smith was so welcoming, and Northampton was, too. I made a lot of new friends I’m still in touch with … so it’s really nice to be coming back.”
Emily Barton reads from “The Book of Esther” on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley.