Across So Many Seas

Author Ruth Behar was inspired to write this novel for middle school readers by the few details she knew about her Spanish grandmother’s life. In an author’s note, Behar explains that she set her story in the larger context of Sephardic history, starting in 1492, the year the Jews were expelled from Spain (which they called Sefarad in Hebrew; hence the name Sephardic Jews). Behar notes that 1492 is better known for Columbus’s conquest of the Americas. However, “for Sephardic Jews, this 1492 is associated with the pain and grief of losing a homeland. That homeland meant so much they continued speaking Spanish, the language of those who expelled them and turned them into wanderers across so many seas.”

Through the eyes of four 12-year-old girls born during different historical periods, yet connected through ancestry, experiences of discrimination, songs, and a musical instrument called an oud, Behar reveals the beauty of the Jewish faith as practiced by its adherents and the ugliness of hatred toward Jewish people.

In 1492, during the Spanish Inquisition, Benvenida and her family choose to leave their home and country rather than convert to Catholicism or be hanged.

After the Turkish War of Independence in 1923, Reina’s father renounces her when she disobeys him, and he sends her to Cuba with a sickly aunt and the looming prospect of an arranged marriage.

In 1961 Cuba, Reina’s daughter Alegra believes that the Cuban revolution will be her ticket to liberation, but Castro’s oppression reaches her and her family, and she is sent to Miami, Fla., to seeming safety.

In 2003 Miami, Alegra’s daughter Paloma embarks on a journey to Spain along with other family members and learns the truth of her grandmother’s words, “Perhaps the past isn’t such a lost country after all.”

Christian parents whose children read Across So Many Seas might find it helpful to talk with them about the tragic, ungodly role some Christians played in the persecution of Jewish people, and to talk about how Jesus commands his children to live for him by loving their neighbors. Though recommended for children 10 to 13 years of age, the book is better suited to ages 12 and older. (Nancy Paulsen Books)