From Here To There: How My Last Book Inspired My Next Book
The Nesting Dolls was Alina’s Adams first historical novel. The response of readers led Alina to write her next historical novel, My Mother’s Secret.
Even though I was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated with my family to the United States in 1977, I didn’t write about either my experience or my background for decades.
Instead, I wrote Regency romances, and contemporary romances, and figure skating mysteries, and tie-in books to the soap-operas As the World Turns and Guiding Light.
It wasn’t like I was deliberately avoiding the topic. It was just that, for years, the feedback I received from editors was that, “Nobody cares. Russia doesn’t sell.”
And then, in 2018, suddenly the narrative changed. “Russia is really hot right now!”
You don’t say! I can’t imagine why!
My July 2020 HarperCollins novel, The Nesting Dolls, was set in three distinct time-periods: 1930s Odessa, USSR and Siberia, 1970s Odessa, USSR, and present day Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
The book was well reviewed, but the consistent throughline from readers was that they enjoyed the first section, the one set in a time and place so rarely written about, the most.
My background is in commercial television production (ABC Sports, ESPN, NBC, ABC Daytime, Procter & Gamble Productions). I am all about giving the customer what they want!
Which is why My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, my current work and 18th publication, is primarily set in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s. Only, instead of the Siberia where innocent (not all, but enough) people were regularly exiled to, this time it’s the Siberia where innocent (some would say misguided, some would say stupid) people voluntarily went.
The Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan was established on the border of Russia and China, with the promise that it would finally be the Jewish homeland so many had longed for. There would be Jewish schools and Jewish newspapers, Jewish farms and Jewish factories. And they would be left alone to govern themselves—as long as they remembered who they owed their gratitude to—that would be one Josef Stalin—and made sure to never, ever do anything to displease him.
Alas, Stalin was easily—and frequently—displeased. Despite its being located, as one character describes it, “on the edge of the world,” Birobidzhan still felt the blowback from Stalin’s homicidal whims and paranoid purges. One village Soviet leader was removed from power, arrested and exiled along with his wife on the charge that they’d tried to poison a comrade of Stalin’s… with gefilte fish, that ultimate Jewish weapon of mass destruction!
In addition to Birobidzhan, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region also features a section set in a World War II prisoner of war camp, where Soviet soldiers are internered side by side with American ones, but suffer a much grimmer fate, due to the USSR not being a signatory to the Geneva Convention. (After all, if The Nesting Dolls readers liked the passage set in captivity best, I am happy to go back to that well, too!)
Aspiring authors are often advised to “write the book of your heart.” That’s nice. But, for me, writing is a profession. I’d rather write what customers want to read. (If for no other reason than writing enough books that customers want to buy starkly increases the odds of them one day wanting to buy the book of your heart, as well.)
My readers very clearly told me what they wanted: Historical fiction set in the USSR which both educates and entertains.
As the reviews for My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region praised:
The thing that I love about reading historical fiction most is learning about things that I had not previously known about. Alina Adams accomplished that for me in her latest book….
First of all, wow. Just wow. I’d never heard of Birobidzhan before. How is this possible?....
I have read a lot of WWII fiction over the years and it always amazes me to read and learn something about this war that I had never heard of or read about it….
I had no prior knowledge of Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and I gained a richer understanding of Russian and Jewish history during WWII….
I had never heard of Birobidzhan and knew little of life in the USSR at the beginning of World War II so the first half of the book was a fantastic learning opportunity built into a great story, would definitely recommend if you want to know more and I will be looking at some of the resources in the authors note….
There are so many different perspectives on Jewish World War II history, it's almost impossible to know them all. And that's why I keep reading….
What an epic historical journey Adams takes us on with this gripping novel. So many of us know so little about the Soviet Union in the years prior to and during WWII….
Few people know about Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the USSR's failed attempt to create a Jewish homeland several decades before the establishment of Israel. "My Mother's Secret" shines a light on the locality's early days, as well as on the horrors of the Soviet army during World War II and the horrific treatment of Soviet POWs, by both the Germans during the war and their own government afterward.
With My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, I did my best to give my readers more of what they told me they loved about The Nesting Dolls.
Now it’s your turn to tell me: How did I do?
About the Author
Alina Adams is the NYT-bestselling author of soap-opera tie-ins, figure-skating mysteries, and romance novels. Born in Odessa, USSR, Adams immigrated to the United States at age seven and learned to speak English by watching American Soap Operas. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. in broadcast communications at San Francisco State University, Adams worked in television as a writer and researcher. Years later she penned the As The World Turns book tie-in, Oakdale Confidential, which became a New York Times bestseller. Adams continued writing and is now a prolific and innovative writer who has authored more than a dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her previous release, The Nesting Dolls, is a Soviet-Jewish historical novel published by HarperCollins in July 2020. Her newest novel, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, was published by History Through Fiction in November 2022. Adams lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.