Felicia Grossman is the author of historical romances like the Truitts, and Once Upon a East End, featuring Jewish protagonists embarking on passionate romances, scandal and lots of delicious food. She kindly took the time to answer my questions about her books, jewish representation and what’s coming next. Enjoy!

1. What drew you to romance and why do you think it has sustained appeal for so many? 

My first memory of genre romance, specifically historical romance, were the mass market paperbacks on the wire racks both at our public library in Wilmington and my grandparents’ news store in Atlantic City. I used to stare at the dresses and desperately want to wear one. My mother called the books “junk,” even though her mother read plenty from the library because she, like me, loved a happy ending. That I believe, is why the genre endures: that, by definition, these book symbolize not just joy, but also hope for their readers. And who doesn’t need that in their life? Well, that and pretty dresses.

2. Your books are unique in focusing on Jewish protagonists in historical romance, Why do you think it’s important to highlight their experiences outside of the Holocaust narratives and how it differs from typical romance protagonists? 

When I was growing-up, Holocaust books for Jewish children were fairly prevalent, as well an emphasis on Holocaust education for us. This was part of an in-community push by our parents, many of whom were children of people who survived, lost family, or were directly affected by the Holocaust, but who were told very little as children, leaving them often confused by their family’s behavior until they were adults. Thus, they wanted their children to have more of a sense of why older people in the community, including their own grandparents, acted in certain ways. This is something I always like to point out, because I think this specific use for Holocaust books and education is often ignored by larger discussions and/or discounted in its significance.

However, that type of Holocaust education and the narratives it employs, because Jews are a really small part of the population (around 2%, though nearly 50% of the world’s Jews), isn’t what most people experience nor discuss when speaking about the Holocaust in media and education.

Instead, unfortunately, the way the Holocaust has been used in popular literature, pop culture, and even education, has both obscured larger patterns of Jewish history (including overshadowing thousands of years of systemic antisemitism in much of the world and creating a “floor,” for violence with its scale and thereby minimizing all prior and later antisemitism) as well as, much like the Jewish history leading up to the Roman conquest and eventual destruction of the second temple, has been used more as a “metaphor,” or “lesson,” for non-Jews and their societies in their own, internal debates regarding things “tolerance” and “prejudice.”

This use almost always completely divorces the Holocaust from the specifics of antisemitism. And rather than teaching particular history of real, living people, becomes something which dehumanizes Jews by idealizing our dead (while again, separating them from their unique culture), making us characters rather than real people, and making non-Jews feel they have claims over our stories and culture, including how it is permitted to be used and expressed.  

I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to write our history at other times in a way which hopefully serves as a counterbalance to the misuse of the Holocaust, and rehumanizes us. The latter being especially critical, antisemitism never went away and is currently on the rise with patterns that more than merely echo the past.

3. Your first duology, the Truitts tackled the U.S’ Gilded Age instead of regency, what drew you to that era in particular?

Appetites & Vices was drafted after I wrote a book, which would technically be a third Truitt, set in 1901, Wilmington, Delaware. I picked that time and that location because my childhood home was in an area of Wilmington which was built just before then and I grew-up wondering about the people who lived in the spaces I inhabited before me.

That book, however, didn’t grab the interests of agents, but I fell in love with one of my side characters, the 80-year-old Grandmother of the hero, Ursula. While I was querying agents, I decided to create a backstory for Ursula, when she was in her 20s, and give her a romance, and thus, Appetites was born.

This is actually one of my favorite things to write: take an older, side character, and imagine what they were like when they were young and how they became who they are in the present. I did this in novella form with Isabelle’s grandmother from Marry Me by Midnight for my newsletter people, set back in Livorno, and it was such a joy to write her at twenty, with all the glimmers of who she’ll become.

4. You’ve mentioned in a previous interview that your research about Jewish observance for Appetites & Vices taught you about the tremendously underrated influence of Rebecca Gatz. Who was she and were there any other historical figures or revelations that influenced your stories? 

Rebecca Gratz was a Jewish American woman from Philadelphia who, in the 1840s, essentially invented Hebrew school, which was a unique concept in Jewish history. At the time, the extremely tiny American Jewish population (we’re talking less than a 10^th of a percent of the U.S. population and less than 1% of the world’s Jewish population), under pressure to assimilate with little time for Jewish study, had become alienated from a lot of Jewish knowledge and culture. Hebrew literacy was especially low.

Gratz, along with Grace Aguilar in England, devised courses of study a few times a week for Jewish children—not just Jewish boys—to change that. Many men of the time, including ones that are well-respected like Abolitionist Rabbi David Einhorn who helped found American Reform Judaism, objected to the “informality,” of what was taught as well as its egalitarian nature. Because of its association with women, who are almost always underappreciated and underpaid, it has often been fodder for often unfair and inaccurate criticism. However, without Hebrew School, I doubt American Jews, especially women, would have as much knowledge or access to our own culture, and we might have not survived as a culture.   

What was also special about Gratz was that she was a prolific letter writer, many which still exist and through those we have a decent social history of how some actual early American (and due to her correspondence with Aguilar, English) Jews lived, many which contradict assumptions made by historians. For example, I came upon a scholarly work about Jews during the Regency which said English speaking Jews weren’t influenced by the Haskalah thinkers, when there are multiple letters in which Gratz talks about reading Mendelssohn and discussing him with Jewish leaders of the time.

Gratz also described Bar Mitzvah practices at Mikveh Israel in the 1790s, which included more than boys being merely called for aliyot, but also reading Torah, after being taught in a dedicated class by then Cantor, Abraham Israel Keys, as well as leading prayers. Closer to modern American Bar and Bat Mitzvahs than what was practiced in eastern Europe at the same time.

While I always like to use real people for inspiration in my stories, the ones I pay the closest attention to are the ones who left direct correspondence, papers, and narratives, like Sir Moses and Judith Montefiore, Rabbis Sabato Morais and Isaac Mayer Wise, author Amy Levy, and even Benjamin Disraeli, who wasn’t Jewish as his family converted, but who had significant contacts and friendships in England’s Jewish community. Those firsthand accounts are truly special and help create a real picture.

5. Were there any scenes or plots that you had to cut for space that you wanted to keep? 

Every single book I’ve written has had at least one significant subplot that’s been cut, and they are all better for it. Like Midnight had a whole thing where Aaron was going to be framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Ludicrous, in retrospect. I have a tendency to overplot in a way that can take from the main relationship, so I always need to be reigned in. Thank goodness I’ve had excellent editors and critique partners to help me with that.

6. Your Once Upon a East End series specifically flips fairytale gender tropes like in Marry Me at Midnight where Aaron is the kind soul from impoverished circumstances that feeds animals while Isabelle is the ambitious woman vying to keep her spot in her father’s joint equity firm. Did subverting these tropes change the characterization? 

One of the things that this has allowed me to do is give my heroines some pieces of some traditionally male historical romance archetypes, i.e., the duke-with-daddy-issues, the bad boy, the beast, etc. This has been both enjoyable, but also more natural than playing with heroine archetypes like “bluestocking,” or “wallflower,” etc.

I’ve never found Jewish women to be able to easily fit into a lot of the heroine archetypes for a couple of reasons, though mainly because we aren’t usually on the receiving end of what is often termed “benevolent sexism,” inside or outside our own communities. Thus, while we face our own challenges, they are often not of the same sort.

The traditional role of Jewish women in our own communities has been one in which we support our male relatives’ ability to study and observe what are called “time-sensitive mitzvot,” ritual and other obligations that must be performed at a particular time and place, i.e. attending scheduled services so you can be counted as part of the minyan (the amount of people needed to do certain prayers).

This has required women to not only run households and raise children, but often businesses (though usually behind the scenes with a man as a figurehead) or be primary bread-winners, as well as to make sure the men had all the necessary space, time, and objects to perform their obligations, plus be fed afterwards (this is generally all much easier when done communally rather than individually, something at odd in many ways with American culture, but that’s a topic for another time).

Anyway, this is a lot of work and through history, women have often become stressed and complained, or even questioned men’s actions, like spending an entire weekly food budget on an Etrog for Sukkot. The work Jewish women have always done was (and is) devalued and often wrongly seen as not only less “holy,” but less necessary to the continuance of Judaism, despite the fact that, in reality, the opposite is true.

This has led to a culture which has seen (and portrayed) its women as shrews who it needs to control lest they ruin things for the “good,” “kindly,” and “pious,” ideal men. Thus, in Jewish culture, it is the men are the “innocent,” ones to whom benevolent sexism flows.

You can see this in Jewish folktales from almost every community. My sister, who is a Hebrew school teacher and constantly looking for stories, and I joke that no matter where it comes from, Yemen, Russia, Iran, Germany, Morocco, Hungary, all Jewish stories have the same elements: a good, kind, wise man; his materialistic shrew wife; and maybe the Prophet Elijiah and/or a talking fish. That’s really not an exaggeration, and something that was brought into the portrayal of Jewish women in modern non-Jewish pop culture, with no small assistance from Jewish men.

At the same time, throughout history, Jewish women have been seen as less innocent, good, or even feminine than the majority of their gentile counterparts (with some notable exceptions, i.e., Black women). This has taken on particular characteristics due to antisemitic stereotypes seeing Jews, in general, as slimy, dishonest, supervillains trying to destroy “good” gentiles and their society. Thus, in the eyes of non-Jews as well, Jewish women generally do not receive the “benefit,” of benevolent sexism, especially compared with most non-Jewish women.

Put together, from this history, it made more sense slating my heroines into the roles of Prince Charming, the Huntsman, or even the Beast, while keeping in mind their limits as both women and Jews, while positioning my heroes as the “princesses,” in the scenarios. And, by doing the same, I felt I could really play with and explore the different facets of all the archetypes, how we understand them, and what they say about the characters and society.  

7. Your books also tackle the themes of assimilation and acceptance and the antisemitism prevalent in the era. Although romance is sometimes characterized as wish fulfillment, why do you feel it’s important to show the hardships alongside the fantasy?

I think it’s really important to show that the world doesn’t need to be perfect to experience joy; that joy and love and happiness are not exclusive rights of the most powerful and privileged; that HEAs are for everyone.

Jewish philosophy often talks about people not being “good,” or “bad,” but having the capacity for both, and how it is our job to get up each day and do our best to make good choices. And when we’re done, we should hopefully have both made the world a little better than when we started, but also enjoyed and appreciated each day. That’s definitely how I like to try to operate, both in real life, and in my books.

Also, for very long time, Jews have lived under the auspicious of various non-Jewish societies, often having very different experiences than the majority. However, the way history is taught obscures and often erases this unless our treatment greatly affects the majority in some way. To me, it’s very important that everyone’s history gets told, not only that of the majority, what is useful to the majority’s image of itself, or the philosophy it wants to espouse.

8. What are your favorite romance tropes, or ones you hope to write in future novels? 

I love enemies to lovers. It is one of the hardest to execute well, but when it is done, it’s incredible and so fun and satisfying and I hope to one day do it justice.

9. I know it is like choosing between children but do you have a favorite scene that you have written? 

I have two: first, the scene in Appetites & Vices where Ursula barges into Jay’s room and demands they have sex, and he says “yes.” That scene was very important to the vestiges of middle school me, who so wanted someone like her to be desirable, because of, not despite, of who she was.

The second is the epilogue to Wake Me Most Wickedly. I suspected the book needed an epilogue when I started edits and was lucky the Fated Mates Podcast happened to an episode, at the exact moment, in June of 2023, about the craft of epilogues and prologues, and including when they were necessary and what the accomplish when done correctly. That episode confirmed that my instincts were right and helped me articulate why and shape what I was drafting and I’m incredibly proud of it.

10. Any upcoming works? 

Well, Wake Me Most Wickedly (Once Upon the East End, book II, the Snow White retelling) will be released 4/9/24. The series will then include two more books, a Beauty and the Beast retelling in 2025 and a Sleeping Beauty retelling in 2026.