Celebrating the Reader

posted by Pearl Abraham

It’s the beginning of my week as Beatrice.com co-host, and with the paperback of The Seventh Beggar just out, I’ll begin with this letter from a reader (with her permission):

Dear Pearl Abraham,

Aside from learning from, and loving, your latest novel, “The Seventh Beggar,” I have to tell you how startlingly weird it was for me to reach the part on the “Winterfox” Festival in the Berkshires, including the reproduced schedule with Sugar Hill Records’ artists featured on the main stage. I understand your inclusion of a music festival, the seven-day creation myth recreated in this way, using fantasy and reality, side by side. What a strange collision of cultures, indeed.

However, my personal interest has to do with Sugar Hill Records, itself, which is based in Durham, North Carolina, my hometown. The founder/owner of Sugar Hill Records is an old friend of mine, and I actually worked for him briefly some years back. How could I resist alerting him to the mention of Sugar Hill in your new novel, which he found to be a “chasidic shocker”! He immediately went out & bought your book, and says all your information is accurate about the former Berkshire Mountain Bluegrass Festival. He then got in touch with the director of the Festival, who is a friend of his, to see if she knew about this citation in your book. He just emailed me that he heard back from the director, who says she doesn’t know you.

So, I’m just writing to tell you that we’re all curious about your choice of this Festival, and your interest in Sugar Hill Records. Needless to say, we’re delighted, but would like to know if you’ve been to the Festival; if you know any of the performers. I loved “The Romance Reader,” too.

Thanks for your time.

Susan Naumoff
(of Latvian & Belarus Jewish heritage)

Pearl Abraham’s response:

I have a farmhouse in Ancramdale, NY (Columbia County) and every summer, in the third week of July, the Rothvoss hilltop several miles north of me becomes a temporary village, with tents and teepees and parked campers just visible over the treeline. For days leading up to the festival, the not-altogether-welcome traffic on my rural road (which normally gets about a car an hour) comes in an assortment of RVs, SUVs, campers, old cadillacs, Vanagons, etc. I was writing The Seventh Beggar, with its themes of creation, origin myths, originality, and storytelling, one July, when once again the festival got going and I was thinking about the attraction to such events, the way it harks back to Mircea Eliade’s (Myth and Reality) ideas about the human need for re-enactment rituals of our shared origin myths. One thing led to another, and the local bluegrass festival made its way into my novel. Since the Hasidic characters of the book aren’t bluegrass musicians they take the idea and run with it, in other words, they transform the bluegrass festival into a Hasidic storytelling festival.

The first summer I spent in Ancramdale, I won a free pass to the festival from Oblong Books in Millerton, and got to see and hear Alison Krauss, among others. I now have a CD collection of bluegrass music, and a favorite, Dolly Parton’s Halos and Horns, is from Sugar Hill Records. I love her bluegrass rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” and play it, according to Stephen (my Mr. Beatrice), much too often.

I will be reading from The Seventh Beggar on Wednesday, September 21st, 7:30pm, at B&N, 8th Street at 6th Aveneue. Introducing me will be Charles Honart, another reader (now a friend) who contacted me, rather than the usual editor or novelist/friend.

18 September 2005 | uncategorized |