Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, February 2024) is an epic historical fiction middle grade novel about Sephardic Jews, jumping from Inquisition Spain in 1492 to Turkey, Cuba, and Miami in more recent years. With narration transitioning among four young girls during these times, the novel highlighted music as a way to connect culture and Jewish tradition through the many years.
I had not learned much about the situation of Jews in Inquisition Spain. Thus, the beginning scenes with young Benvenita in 1492 Toledo was my favorite part. I felt empathy for the agony and difficulty her family faced as they crossed the sea into a new life in Turkey. I couldn’t imagine the choice of either abandoning my heritage or fleeing for my life. The setting in Toledo was realistic in description, and it felt clear to me that the author was able to recall her own experience walking those streets in order to draw the scene in words. I had not even known that there was a thriving Spanish Jewish community in Turkey, and so it was fascinating to see that as their destination in that era in which there was not yet a “new world” to flee to.
The other three sections of the book just did not resonate with me as much. I hate to say it, but every voice sounded the same. That said, Turkey was a unique setting. The Sephardic community was thriving four hundred years after Benvenida’s family had arrived as outcasts, and there was even a unique Spanish spoken in those regions of Turkey. I didn’t know any of that. I appreciated that our new character for this section, Reina, had a musical connection to her ancestor through the oud. I like considering how the music transitioned into the new country’s musical types, even while the Spanish traditions and the Jewish traditions continued. But then her banishment to Cuba for disobeying seemed weirdly out-of-proportion, but maybe it was just that I hadn’t had enough time to get to know her.
The last two sections, narrated by Alegra (a young woman in Cuba in 1961) and Paloma (a Miami girl in 2003) fell completely flat for me. Their narration voices sounded so similar I wouldn’t have known it was a different narrator unless I had been told (as I was). Somewhat forced conversations gave the characters the background we needed to make sense of the characters.
Alegra’s story involved working in the countryside in a literacy campaign for the revolutionaries, before she was whisked away from Cuba to the safety of the United States. It felt completely unrelated to the Jewish traditions and musical heritage mentioned in other sections. Her mother’s oud had remained on the wall her whole life; it seemed so strange that it would then suddenly be important. There was likewise little connection between Paloma’s personality and the rest of the story. She too did not feel unique. And, as is the case with so many epic books, the sweet and tidy conclusion was not only unrealistic, it was eye-rolling.
I was disappointed that this book wasn’t sweeping epic I had hoped it would be. The characters and settings do provide an important reminder of how Sephardic Jews have spread their beautiful heritage and culture throughout the world in the past 500 years. I only wish it had the strength of writing and plot to uphold such an epic legacy “across so many seas.”
